


Someone to Catch me

by Falke



Series: Finding Our Way [3]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Action, Angst, F/M, Minor Original Character(s), Police Procedural, Romance, Spoilers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:21:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 33,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7033186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falke/pseuds/Falke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say a cornered mammal is most desperate because it has nothing to lose. </p><p>But Nicholas Wilde would revise that if he could. For the first time in his life, he has everything to lose.</p><p>He's never been more scared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. [prologue]

**Author's Note:**

> This work is set post-canon. It includes spoilers from the film, original characters, graphic violence and strong language. It adheres to [timeline](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPmpmdo39SmiRNC4BJVv2PAWi7fxBoP5FWba9n8s3qg/edit?pref=2&pli=1) and serves as a direct sequel to [Blind Spots](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6528139/chapters/14934682), so you should read that first to best understand what's going on.

Nick stared at Judy's ceiling.

The nightmares were back.

It wasn't often he had bad dreams anymore, or even unsettling ones. Most of the time Judy's presence in his arms was enough to keep those at bay. They'd agreed to leave their work outside their thresholds, and for the most part it worked beautifully. Now, even the worst aspects of their jobs typically didn't follow them home.

But they both understood that for all their conscious love and desire to keep each other safe, their minds didn't always cooperate. Sometimes things made it through that barrier. It was impossible to just drop something as formative as the Boots case, even two months on.

They'd been living in a bubble before. The string of grisly murders had shaped them both, dumped them in the unglamorous deep end of policing and dragged them through it. They'd screwed up. People - innocent and otherwise - had died.

And Nick still heard the awful noise of Boots' last kill, back there in the misty alley. He'd covered Judy's ears, to spare her exactly this experience. That was why he wouldn't wake her now. He eased his arms tighter around her, carefully so she wouldn't stir.

The only closure they'd taken from it had been from each other. Nick seized on that one bright spot the way he always did when the memories shook him from sleep. He might have lost parts of himself, but he'd gained a lover. He had someone now he could pour everything into.

\---

 _"Get your pawpsicles,"_ Judy murmured, so only he would hear as they made their way down the sidewalk.

Nick looked down at her, grateful for the sunglasses that would hide some of his embarrassment. "Are you going to bring that up every time we come down here?"

"Maybe," she said. "Do you think any of these bankers will recognize you?"

"I'm hoping not in the uniform."

They pushed through the revolving door into the lobby of Garreline's downtown branch. Nick took in the scents of money and then dismissed them as best he could. A year ago some part of him would have privately savored the unique tang of bills, but now it was just a distraction. He had a job to do.

Their tech team had spent weeks doing things Nick didn't understand with computers, beavering their way into Garreline's systems with the help of fresh signatures from the courts. This is where the Boots case had started, with disappearances and murders of mid-level staff, and now it seemed this is where it might end: right at the top. They had a warrant for one Allan Reed, Garreline's pika branch manager, whom ZPD now had compelling reason to believe was mixed up in organized crime.

Late morning was quiet. There were only a few patrons at the old-fashioned teller's windows, which was part of the reason they'd chosen now to exercise their warrant. Nick wanted to keep this low-key.

There was no escaping the looks, of course. There was a lemming teller at almost every one of the big double-row of windows along each side of the lobby, and most of them were watching Nick and Judy with more than just idle curiosity.

"They seem to like the uniforms, too," Judy whispered, keeping her face straight.

"I don't suppose they'll mistake us for people looking to open an account," Nick grumbled. "I'll bet we don't make enough to get in the doors on our own."

There was an ornate desk at the end of the lobby, with a stack of mostly rodent-scale administrative offices on three levels behind it. The mouse on reception gave a polite smile.

"Good morning, officers. How can I help you?"

"We need to speak to Director Reed," Judy said. She handed over her badge and the warrant paperwork. "As soon as possible."

The mouse's eyes widened just a touch. "Certainly." She handed the letter back and pressed a speakerphone button on her desk. Nick kept his eyes front and pretended not to notice her looking at his teeth. "Director?"

"Yes, Mary?"

"There are two police officers here to see you. They need to speak with you right away."

"In his office, if possible," Nick put in.

"I'll be right out," Reed said.

Never mind, then. They didn't have proof or even much reason to suspect there were other compromises at Garreline, but Nick would have preferred to do this without the entire day shift listening in all the same. Judy's ears rotated to pick out the lack of noise behind them, as well.

It dragged on for a good minute until a pika in a neat suit trotted out from the largest of the offices behind the desk and made for one of the seating areas in the corner of the room. They followed.

Reed stopped most of the way up the spiral ramp that made up the outside of the ring, so he'd be closer to eye level with them. "Hello, officers. How can I help you?"

Mr. Reed-" Judy held up the paperwork so he could see. "We have a warrant here from Zootopia District Court for your arrest, in connection with a series of suspicious wire transfers through Garreline. We'd like to ask you some questions."

Reed's tiny face darkened. "Arrest? For wire transfers? My bank makes a point of scrupulous adherence to the law. What are you implying, officer?"

"That's what we're hoping you can clear up for us," Judy said. "If it's really nothing, this shouldn't take too much of your time."

"I won't be saying a word until I can meet with my lawyer." Reed plucked a grey business card from his pocket and held it up.

"Of course, sir," Judy said. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. Should you decide to answer any questions before your attorney is present, you will still have the right to stop answering until you meet your counsel."

Reed's eyes narrowed. "I understand. I suppose you'll have to cuff me."

"I'm sorry, sir, but yes. We'll escort you out." Judy pulled out a set of rodent-scale cuffs.


	2. Chapter 2

Arrests were always a bit of a rush, even now, but this one had seemed especially fast. Nick looked through the one-way glass in the observation room, at where Reed was absorbing whatever his lawyer was murmuring to him, and weighed the sense of wrongness in his head.

"He took that really well," Judy said.

"Much better than most innocent people would, even if they were getting arrested by you."

"How would you know?" Judy scowled up at him and shook her head. "I knew I should have taken you in for your taxes."

"Things would have turned out different," Nick said. It was a weak joke, but it was also the truth: it was occasionally useful when other people underestimated Judy. He certainly had, and look where he'd ended up.

He pointed through the glass to focus them again. "We didn't mention connections to any of the killings when we grabbed him. I mean, we can't, unless something concrete shows up. But maybe he just doesn't get it yet."

"They were on the news, at least for a while," Judy said. "I had to keep changing the radio station in the cruiser."

"Mm." Reed could also just not have expected them to come after him, if they were the first ones on the force to actually start unsticking the hooks organized crime had in some of these banks.

That was conjecture, of course, and Nick knew he'd do well to keep his interview training in mind and not rush ahead. His own experience with the legal fringe hadn't extended to corruption or hits. There was a good chance he didn't know the signs as well as he thought he did. More to the point, Reed was innocent until proven guilty. For now, all ZPD had to go on was coincidence and - in Nick's case - wishful thinking borne of an unprofessional concern for a certain rabbit.

He took advantage of the quiet, otherwise deserted room to reach over briefly and run a thumb along the soft fur at the base of Judy's left ear. He heard her take a deep breath.

"You okay?"

"I'm okay," she said, and hefted their case file. "Not that I'm looking forward to it."

"You're going to show him the pictures," Nick said.

"I'm going to give him the choice," Judy corrected. "If they shocked us, they'll shock him."

Nick worried it might shock them again, but she knew that, and she was going to do it anyway. He increased the pressure so Judy would lean into his touch. "I've got your back."

They went next door. Reed looked immediately to their entrance, and a moment later his lawyer did the same.

His ZPD-issue visitor badge read Anton Baird. He was a koala in an impeccable suit, with the fuzziness and air of approachability the species tended to carry. But his eyes were sharp and careful and put Nick's hackles up in no time at all. The fact he was a corporate lawyer was almost secondary.

Judy took the seat directly across from Reed. Nick turned his 45 degrees, sat so he could look straight ahead past Reed and his lawyer, and affected an expression of casual disinterest.

"Thank you for being so cooperative thus far, Director Reed," Judy said. "Have you agreed to answer some questions for us?"

"Some." Reed glanced at the koala next to him and slid a signed form across the table. "But first: what is this about wire transfers that has ZPD so jumpy?"

"They're hard to pin down details for," Judy said. She flourished a printed ledger and handed it over. "That's unusual, compared to every other transaction your bank has processed for the last few months. Can you think of any reason why?"

"Garreline prides itself on its discretion," Reed said. "I can't and won't comment on our clients' transactions unless you've found evidence of something illegal."

Which they hadn't, of course. The payouts in question seemed designed to meet every threshold for legality they could be tested with. The suspicious parts were that they met those thresholds and exactly nothing else. No names, no notes; just two account numbers and some impressively high balances going between them. Every other transaction ZPD had tracked had some kind of chatter associated with it, or some way to trace the activity to legitimate operation. These wires just disappeared.

And the timing coincided almost perfectly with three of Boots' last hits, but Nick suspected Reed wasn't about to volunteer that information if he knew it.

Judy held up the thin folder she'd carried in. "There are two sheets in this folder. The first is a set of images: four of your company's employees as they appear in your records. The second sheet is how we found them the days they died. It's up to you if you want to look." She slid the folder across the table.

Reed looked. Baird looked on, too, his expression neutral.

When Reed lifted the page to see the second sheet, he couldn't help his revolted noise. Baird's face didn't change, but for a brief tightening around his eyes.

"What happened?" Reed asked.

"Murder. A rhino called Boots stepped on them."

"Why?"

"We're hoping you can help us figure that out."

"You think I had something to do with this?" Reed asked. His composure finally broke a bit and he slid the folder away from him. Nick smelled fear. "They were my coworkers."

Judy nodded, sympathetic. "Boots was paid in cash. We don't think money ever came from your bank as payment for-" she waved a paw at the folder. "-what he did. These mystery transfers did happen around the same time, but they moved way more money than what we found in Boots' apartment. Close to two million dollars."

"That's tenuous," Baird said. His voice was soft and careful. Nick's dislike grew. "What makes you think Director Reed played any part in these transactions in the first place? They are, by your own admission here, day-to-day bank activity."

Reed nodded his head. "If I had to oversee every transfer that came through our network, I wouldn't get anything else done. As it is, we have a whole team dedicated to watching it."

"Maybe we'll talk to them next," Judy said. "But until then, anything you can tell us about these wires will help. We have to investigate if they were connected to these deaths at all."

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, Officer Hopps," Baird said. "But it seems a stretch that you would need to arrest my client and subject him to something so distressing to get answers. You could have just asked."

Judy blinked. Nick glanced her way and was careful to keep his expression fixed. The koala was a smooth talker, just the sort of person Nick would have immediately subjected to the full force of his sarcasm once upon a time. Judy was more straightforward, maybe more prone to getting flustered in the face of this kind of treatment. But he couldn't step in for her now.

"ZPD sticks to procedure when it comes to murders," she said, emphasizing each word with a light claw on the tabletop. "They're something we take more seriously than average questioning, and they need their paper trail." She looked at Reed. "You of all people understand that."

Left unsaid was that they couldn't let this slip through their paws. ZPD couldn't, and Nick and Judy couldn't either. It was still personal, even with Boots dead. They still needed to know why.

Baird's eyes slid to Nick. "You agree with your partner, Officer...?"

"Wilde," Nick said. "Nick Wilde. And yes, I do. There's a reason procedure is in place."

"You haven't said much. Haven't said anything, actually."

Nick raised his eyebrows. "There hasn't been any call for the good cop routine yet."

One of Judy's ears rotated to focus his voice, and Nick almost winced. He was pushing it. Reed swallowed. Baird just looked disgusted he turned to Judy. "Do you have any formal charges to file, Officer? If not, I'd request you stop wasting my client's time."

"We have nothing to charge you with, Mr. Reed. But you are one of the only remaining connections to a string of murders, and if you don't agree to make statements for the affidavit your warrant directs that you be remanded to protective custody, in the event the feds have questions for you. That will be up to the courts."

Reed blanched. "You'd arrest me?"

"Protective custody is not technically arrest," Judy said. "But your movements and communications would be restricted."

"I don't like this," Reed said. He looked to his lawyer. "They can't just put me away, can they? I have rights."

Baird offered a bland nod. "They are within their own obligations as peace officers to protect you until federal investigators complete their own inquiry."

"How long?"

"It depends on the speed of the investigation. Months, at worst."

"No," Reed said. "I have a family, I can't leave them. I can't risk being away from work, not with the way things are now."

"Then I would advise you make what statements you can."

"I don't know anything!" Reed protested. "Nowak said he changed his mind-"

"Reed." Baird closed his eyes.

The pika brought himself up short, but it was far too late. Nick pointed his muzzle across the table. Judy's ears shot to attention.

"Who's Nowak?" she asked.

"I won't incriminate myself," Reed ground out.

Judy glanced at Nick. "That might make obstruction of justice stick," she said, as if the others weren't there.

Nick nodded. "He'll need to get measured for an anklet either way."

"How about it, Reed?" Judy asked.

Reed looked helplessly between them. Baird just shrugged at his client's mute appeal.

"Your best option now is to cooperate."

\---

The pika had scribbled for a full ten minutes, then left to get fitted for a tracking anklet. Two officers met him at the door, assigned to watch over his first night in protective custody. Nick and Judy were left their own unenviable task: financial crime paperwork. Nick decided he'd rather tackle high-speed pursuits against the right of way.

"You know we have a whole division here at HQ who does this all day," Judy said, three hours later, when they were finally wrapping up. "I'll never complain about tagging evidence again."

"And why didn't we just give it to them?" Nick asked.

"It's our case now. Fangmire and Torren are under an even bigger mountain of this stuff than we are, and Marki... I don't even know where Marki is right now."

"I've only ever seen her shooting things, or running to a better vantage point from which to shoot things," Nick said. "And that one time she put McHorn in medical during spar week. I want her job."

"Are you done?"

"I'm done." Nick turned his computer off and rotated his chair to face hers. "Let me treat you to dinner?"

The only place that was still open was Pete's, a greasy diner four blocks away that served pancakes and eggs 24 hours a day. It was a favored police hangout. Nick got a couple of nods as they pushed open the door. Judy hauled a booster seat to one of the booths.

Sheri, the longtime hippo waitress, brought them coffee unprompted. "Hi, you two. Want the usual turf?"

"Just half of one tonight," Judy said. "Thanks."

"Sure." Sheri turned to Nick. "Surf or soy?"

"Toast, actually," Nick said. "And a couple of really runny eggs."

"Coming up." Sheri whisked away.

Judy stirred creamer into her half-caf, looking drawn and more than a little morose.

"Good work today," Nick said, hoping to get at least one of her ears back up.

"Could have gone better. Thanks for the good cop comment, by the way," she muttered. "Very professional."

"I had to do something," Nick said. "That Baird guy is a total shyster. He was sucking the light out of the room."

"I don't like him, either, but you sounded like someone out of a bad procedural." Judy slurped her coffee. "It's probably going to be hard enough to get him to cooperate with us as it is."

"Fair. Assuming we even see him again. Corporate attorneys never fly solo for long. Reed coughed up something useful, at least."

Judy had a little steno pad she carried everywhere, even when she was off duty. Now she pulled it out and flipped through a couple pages. "Greg Nowak. Goes by _'Whistler.'_ Ferret. White fur. He's got a record, but it's petty stuff. Tech is hammering on his email address. No physical address in the system; last seen on the border between Rainforest District and Happytown."

Nick didn't want her working, not now. There would be time enough for that tomorrow. But she'd probably put it aside when their food arrived in a few minutes anyway, and he was interested, too.

"What's a guy like that doing at Garreline?" he asked.

"You really think he used the front doors? The way Reed talked about him I doubt he was a banner client. I'd rather know what he 'changed his mind' about."

The only way to do that, of course, was to ask this Whistler himself, because Reed had wised up just in time and they couldn't compel anything from him that he hadn't already given during questioning. The pika had implied Whistler was connected to the mystery transactions in some way, and that was enough to bring him in on probable cause for the afternoon. They just had to find him.

Rainforest was rougher than most places, but Happytown was the deep end. Nick had spent a couple years trying to survive there, in the literal and immediate sense of the term more often than he'd liked, before he'd wised up and started scraping by downtown. He didn't want to subject Judy to that if he could help it, either, even as law enforcement: the police who dealt with Happytown weren't as _nice_ as the ones in Precinct One, and she had precious little of her idealism left unsullied.

Sheri brought their food and Judy did put away her notes. It was artery-hardening good, as always. Nick soaked his toast in yolks and tried not to look like he was enjoying it too much.

They ate in comfortable silence, but for the one question Judy floated when they were nearly done. Her ears tracked around the diner briefly.

"So. Who's closer?"

"To here?" Nick checked their surroundings himself. Sheri was chatting with a couple of patrons off in the corner, and the only other set of ears was the cook back in the kitchen. "You, probably."

"Stay the night, Mr. Wilde?"

"Oh so happily."

Nick settled up - fifty percent tip, because Judy never let him pay and he liked that Sheri treated a fox and a rabbit like a couple of normal mammals, even this time of night - and they left through the side door.

He held off until they reached Judy's apartment, or maybe she did. But the door locked behind them and immediately she pushed him over to the couch by her bed, so he could sit and she could stand in front of him on the cushions and kiss him with her full weight.

"I hope this never gets old," he breathed when Judy finally let him get around to it.

She screwed up her face. "You taste like eggs."

"I can go brush my teeth."

"It's fine." She bore down on his muzzle again so he wouldn't move. "You taste like you more."

They had to save all of this newfound love for these moments. Most of the time they were the public face of the city, and even when they weren't on duty they were too different to risk being seen doing something like this. Judy hated hiding it. Nick wasn't a fan, either, but he felt they did a good job of making up for lost opportunity. Judy was hot in his arms, even through her uniform. She smelled like cedarwood, rich and reassuring and so constant. He pressed his muzzle alongside her neck and rumbled in pleasure like a little kit.

"I love you," she murmured.

It was unfamiliar, hearing that. Sometimes it still made Nick's fur stand on end.

"You beat me to it," he said.

"You can just say _'I love you, too,'_ " Judy said. She poked his forehead and pushed him back far enough to make sure he saw her faked exasperation. "There's nothing cliche about it if it's true."

"Oh, and is it." Nick nosed her ear. " _I love you, too,_ Carrots."

They rested. Just took time for themselves. Nick dumped his uniform in a marginally ceremonious pile on one end of the couch until Judy made him hang it up alongside hers, and then they curled up under one of the blankets from Judy's bed and watched a superhero movie they'd both seen together a dozen times. It was a comfort thing, an excuse to share something they knew by heart and pay more attention to each other than to the screen of Nick's phone. Judy played with the notch in his ear, the one physical reminder of their last big case.

The others required their own little ritual, the one the world had forced on them. Judy knelt on Nick's lap and pushed against his paws.

"You okay?" he asked her, and kissed one of her fingers.

"I'm okay. You?"

"I had an alley dream. Last night."

"Okay." Judy rearranged herself to sit and lean against his chest. "Spill it."

"Nothing new. Same race down to the end, same noise. Same waiting to wake up through the gunfire. My subconscious doesn't know how to scare me properly."

Judy never did smile when he joked about it.

"Wake me if it happens again," she said. "Seriously. You know I've woken you. We're getting back into this now, after almost two months. This won't be the last time."

"If it happens again." Nick nodded.

"Promise."

Now he really would wake her if he had to. He hugged her close and let her nestle against his neck. "Promise."


	3. Chapter 3

It was hard to hunt down a petty criminal, which was a strange problem to have when Nick could usually locate Duke Weaselton in a matter of minutes.

But Whistler was proving more difficult. More inventive, maybe. They'd spent most of the day so far chasing cold leads, or following up with the few of Nick's contacts who would still speak to him now that he was respectable. That bemused Judy for some reason.

"You're not after them for anything," she said as they retreated from their latest failed attempt. "Why do they worry about it so much?"

"A lot of them care about reputation," Nick said as they walked the damp sidewalk down on the edge of the Rainforest District, dodging from awning to awning. "It's not that they don't want to talk to us; it's that they don't want to be seen talking to us."

"You helped me, way back when."

"After you put me on a million-dollar hook."

"Several-hundred-thousand-dollar hook, by your own admission." Judy shook her head. "And you stuck around."

"That's because I never did care about what people thought."

Once a sly fox, always a sly fox. It was all most people ever thought, and he'd learned to work with it. Donned it as a persona. He hadn't seen the need for anything different until Judy came along, until he had someone to care about. Perception mattered a lot more when you weren't the only one it impacted. Now he was more careful, looked at the bigger picture and the next day and how his actions would reflect on their partnership, because he didn't want to screw any of it up, professional or otherwise. Judy was too important now.

Nick was pretty sure she knew that, but she'd always been more headstrong. He liked to think he balanced her a bit, kept her from getting too far ahead of what she or they could manage.

They crossed the street and regained the dry interior of their cruiser. Judy tabbed through the computer from the boosted driver's seat, looking for new messages.

"We've run out of other people who might know where this guy is," she said, and eyed him. "Unless Finnick has something."

"I have asked." Nick waggled his phone. "Nothing yet. Might have to give it a day or two; if he's busy with a job he won't want to get in touch-" Nick remembered the camera on the dash. "Not until it's through."

She took them out through the rain and triggered the wipers. "Nothing from your contacts, his nose has been officially clean for a good six months, no current paperwork at all. How do you just disappear like that?"

"I did it for years," Nick said. "It's not impossible. Police can't get to all the angles."

"Even Weaselton's got pawprints everywhere," Judy grumbled.

"You thought that, too, huh?"

Ten minutes of driving brought them to the edge of Happytown, through a chain-link gate that looked to be more for show than anything else. The buildings here were simpler, dirtier and older. There was no attempt to incorporate environment: the structures themselves were the environment. They passed houses, tenements, warehouses and the occasional business.

Whistler's last known address - extracted and pieced together with much difficulty, and now several months outdated - was a wobbly three-by-three stack of rooms that made Judy's apartment look palatial. They parked two blocks away on a straight line so they could see the entrance without drawing too much attention, and waited.

They didn't see ferrets, but they saw plenty of other predators. There were lions, hyenas, a few cougars here and there; a skinny otter climbed the outer stairs to the room next to Whistler's. The prey animals that did wander by were mostly solitary and always either rough- or shifty-looking. A leopardess and a vixen in revealing clothing loitered at a nearer corner in broad daylight, ignoring the cruiser.

"This is different," Judy said at last.

" _Happytown is its own beast,_ I think the motto was the last time I was through." Nick watched his partner carefully. "I'm glad for your sake you never got farmed out here."

"I guess I always knew," she said. "You can't have a city without a dirtier side. But getting it all at once is a shock." She waved a paw at the corner, where the two animals weren't doing anything to disguise their blatant appraisal of passing drivers. "You'd never see escorts downtown."

"They'd thank you for being so polite," Nick said.

Judy looked over at him, troubled. Nick took advantage of their tinted windows to reach over and squeeze a paw over her knee.

Three hours dragged on. Nick kept an eye on passersby; Judy took careful notes on the building they were watching and the animals they saw going in and out. They'd tuned the radio to the local precinct band; it was a wash of unfamiliar voices and the occasional off-color joke. Judy scowled each time.

The next-door otter came back out of his room and descended the stairs. Still no ferret.

"If this really is where Whistler is, it makes even less sense than before that he'd have something legitimate to do with Garreline," Judy said. She looked at the notebook in her lap. "Do you think he was connected to the money?"

"All we know is he 'changed his mind' about something," Nick said. "Could be money, could be a lunch date."

"Okay. So people we can track down, then: what's Allan Reed doing associating with a petty criminal?"

"I wonder if that has to do with how cool he was when we brought him in," Nick said. "Who carries their lawyer's contact info on a single card in their pocket?"

"You think he was expecting to get picked up."

"It's a possibility," Nick said. "Everybody has a motive. The Academy likes to think it teaches that, but I learned that sort of thing in my first months out here." He indicated the neighborhood before them.

But there were aspects to that scenario that didn't track right. Reed had smelled plenty shaken when he'd seen the photos of Boots' kills. The way his lawyer had tried to shut him up, it sounded like Nowak - Whistler - wasn't supposed to have been part of the discussion.

Judy shook her head. "Say you're right. I can't see a successful manager getting tangled up in murders. It's not out of the question, I guess, but seems like a stretch. I say we focus on his finances."

She swung the computer over on its articulated arm and started tapping out a bulletin form. Nick leaned over to watch.

"For Reed? We've already got him."

"For Whistler. I don't like being totally blind. This will go citywide, so maybe we can get a couple leads for tomorrow."

The sun had started to set but they watched for another half-hour anyway. Judy got steadily more fidgety. Her ears kept rotating back to the girls nearby.

She started the engine when a car came to a stop at the corner and a big bear in sunglasses buzzed down the window.

"Carrots," Nick murmured, forgetting the cameras for a moment. He checked his taser where she wouldn't see. "I'd leave this one alone."

"I'm going to," she said, and took them right, away from the encounter on the corner. They were headed for the perimeter.

Nick relaxed a bit. Two cops from the wrong precinct might still have the law on their side, but direct confrontation of prostitution had a history of just making things worse for everyone.

They rolled back into the familiar streets of downtown. At the next red light, Judy sighed.

"Sorry, Nick. I didn't know if we were done."

"It was a long shot," he said. "We'll try again tomorrow."

Judy inspected the steering wheel. "I shouldn't like that I'm more comfortable here. Downtown."

"Happytown is mostly predators," Nick said. "I don't blame you."

"But that's not supposed to matter anymore," she said. "And it's not the real problem. I shouldn't want to pick and choose because of what I see."

Someone behind them beeped, and Judy had to drive again. Nick racked his brain for a joke, for something to lighten the mood, but he kept coming up blank. She did that to him sometimes, when she got under the long experience of living on the streets and did something that humbled him.

"You're decent, Hopps. I don't know if I tell you that enough."

Her ears lifted, just a bit.

They parked and rostered out, stowing what they could at their desks so they didn't have to lug it home. Judy plugged her radio in so it would charge overnight.

Their paths home shared a couple of train stops; they tended to wait a bit during their commute to let any extra-familiar faces filter out before they got to their usual discussion.

 _"So,"_ Nick said.

"I don't think I should do anything tonight," Judy said, keeping it oblique. "I need to finish laundry anyway."

"You're no fun." Nick savored a moment of disappointment, then let it go before it could take root. If this was about what they'd seen today, it wouldn't do either of them any good to hold onto it. They'd talk it out, they way they did everything - even if it was over muzzletime.

"Sorry, fox. I can walk a while, though, at your stop. Hearthseed Market has better veggies than the grab-n-go."

They savored the time together in silence, at careful distance. It was what they had to do in public. Nick reassured himself with the knowledge that their next quiet moment would be even more powerful.

He left Judy at the market, where she threw a look at him over the celery that did a good job of reassuring him no, this wasn't some hangup over prostitutes, it really was about laundry and it was a _damn_ shame, and went home a bit warmer for it.

He clicked his locks, dropped his radio in its cradle and went to change.

The leftover shrimp scampi in his fridge was getting rubbery, but Nick was on his own tonight so he didn't care. It still tasted fine. He ate it right there at the counter in the dim kitchen.

He was very much aware of what he looked like. Some nights, when it didn't work out, there was this desperate loneliness that really didn't suit his old persona at all. Finnick wouldn't have let him hear the end of it, if they were still talking regularly. But that was another sacrifice assumed when Nick had started working as a cop. He gave the fennec his space these days, waited for him to text.

The upsides outweighed the downsides, of course. By a long, long shot. Judy gave him everything he needed, and more. She unwrapped him, reminded him of the good in the world and how important it was they help it along. She even deigned to feel personal responsibility and guilt for predator-prey divides, which was a far sight more than most in Zootopia did, even today.

Nick loved her for that especially, in a strange selfish way. _You see this exemplary cop?_ He liked to ask people in his head on the boring patrols. _The one everyone loves and admires? I get to kiss her and sleep with her and keep her safe almost every night. She loves it as much as I do and there's nothing you can do about it._

She'd call eventually. She was good about keeping those unspoken promises. Until then, Nick had his warm, fuzzy thoughts. And the constant presence of the police radio floating in and out of his perception.

_"Early start tonight, I guess. Grizzoli says three-plus. We'll need another wagon."_

_"10-81 on Tujunga again. Mid-scale, looks like a couple of deer."_

_"Wolfovitz, responding to that ZMS call at the Waterfront."_

_"Dispatch, get someone on utilities' case again. There are three lights out in four blocks down here in Canyonlands."_

Nick tossed his cardboard in the trash and made for the couch by the window. It would be a good night to watch the Rainforest District storms.

_"Anybody have 43 on Waterfront? Small-scale? I can't find our caller."_

_"Ambulance ETA ten minutes to Waterfront."_

_"Del Gato, tell Grizzoli he can have two. Car Eleven, about five minutes out."_

Nick wouldn't be able to hear the thunder through the soundproofing, which was the one downside to this view. He would have liked to let the chatter sink back into the background. Maybe some music-

_"Ten-double-zero, double-zero. Dispatch, you tell that ambulance to step on it. It's Hopps."_

The world ground to a halt under Nick's paws.

_"Oh... somebody find Wilde."_

But he was already gone. The door to his apartment banged off its stop and hung ajar.


	4. Chapter 4

Nick might have actually beaten the ambulance to the hospital. He'd left a trail of train passengers and late-night pedestrians that probably didn't think much more of foxes now, and was probably sending this waiting room the same direction, but this duty nurse he'd cornered was not _listening_ and the rest of the world could shove its collective opinions right now.

"Does this mean _nothing?"_ Nick waved his badge again, the one thing he'd taken with him besides the clothes on his back. It got him results or at least grudging respect any other time he had to haul it out, but this deer wasn't having it and Nick was getting frantic.

"As I told you, sir, I'm going to need more evidence than a badge before I can trust who you are. Do you have ID?"

"Call ZPD. Precinct One. Nicholas Wilde, duty number P1-168124F. They'll vouch for me."

"Sir-"

"Better yet, give me a two-way, something with a police band. I'll do it myself."

"Sir, I need ID before I let you anywhere."

"I don't _have_ ID!" Nick exploded. "I told you already, I came straight here because my partner is about to roll into the ER and I need to see her, I won't wait-"

The panicked deer finally waved over a nearby security guard, an old rhino who was a couple donuts shy of needing a new belt.

"Buddy, take it easy. We can't just let you in. This is a hospital, remember. You need to calm down so I don't have to escort you out."

Nick roiled in contempt. "I'm not going anywhere."

The rhino could still manage a good threatening snort. "Then you'd better slow down and explain, fox. Quietly, hear?" He motioned the deer to go back about his business.

"I'm ZPD Officer Nicholas Wilde," Nick said. "My partner, Judy Hopps, is here because of a double-zero call. You know what that is? Someone attacked her."

"She a fox, too?"

Nick's gut twisted, but he didn't have time to consider it. "She's a rabbit. We're all over half the recruitment posters in the city; when was the last time you looked at a billboard?"

The guard's eyes narrowed. "Okay. If you're her partner, where were you?"

"We were both off-" Nick stopped. The way the rhino was squinting at him hit home hard enough to make his hackles shift. "You think I had something to do with her getting hurt?"

"You're the one waving around a badge without any sort of ID," the rhino said. "It'll be your word against hers. If she even is back there somewhere."

Nick's ears flattened. Half the room dropped its pretense of ignoring the argument and started paying very close attention as he growled.

The security guard stepped forward, hard enough to rattle the unoccupied chairs. "Time for you to go, fox."

"Wilde!"

Nick turned. There was a tiger in ZPD blue and Captain's bars making for them across the waiting room, his tail lashing.

"Fang. What happened to Judy?"

"Easy," Fangmire said as he came up. He held up a soothing paw between Nick and the guard. "I'll take him from here, Lowitzki."

"He said he was a cop," Lowitzki said.

"He is a cop," Fangmire said, as if he couldn't see the problem. He shooed the rhino. "Don't worry about it. Get us a visitor form, will you?"

"Fang, what _happened?"_

The tiger frowned down at him. "No radio? No ID?"

Nick, still clutching his badge, spread his paws in exasperation. "What else was I supposed to do? I came straight here."

Fangmire pointed Nick to a set of chairs in the corner, near the hallway leading into the hospital proper, and spoke into his radio. The rest of the mammals in the waiting room, apparently satisfied the half-crazy fox was now back under some degree of control, went back to ignoring them.

"Captain-"

"Sit. Fill that out." Fangmire took the visitor's clipboard from Lowitzki and thrust it at Nick. "Wolfovitz found Judy down at boardwalk with a stab wound to the stomach, below her vest."

The chair squeaked against the floor as Nick made to get up and storm into surgery himself. Fangmire's paw was at his shoulder, though, holding him in place.

"He says she looked okay when ZMS loaded her, Wilde. Good blood pressure, clean wound, everything." He had to push Nick down again. "Listen. The best thing you can do for her right now is stay out of the surgeons' way."

Nick's ears rang. "Who?"

"We don't know. You were off-duty, yeah?"

Nick nodded. "Just came off. We got groceries. She was going home."

"You need to tell me everything you remember," Fangmire said. "We have a team going over the scene with fine combs but there were no direct witnesses, no perp or weapon. The longer it stays that way the worse our shot at finding a lead gets."

Nick fought the awful taste in his throat and related everything about their case and the day's surveillance he could recall. Fangmire seemed to be absorbing it like a recorder.

"No reason for anyone associated to be downtown?"

"Nothing we knew."

"Nobody approached the cruiser while you were watching Nowak's apartment?"

"No."

"This case is going cold."

"Except someone went after her," Nick snapped. And he hadn't been there. His tail lashed; his claws scraped on the linoleum.

"She's safe now." Fangmire kept Nick in his seat again. "She'll be okay."

"You said yourself we don't have any leads. They're not going to let me in; am I just supposed to sit here and let whoever did this get even more distance?"

"Don't let the worry push you into something you'll regret, Wilde. Our people are working on it. You'll be the first to know if they find anything."

He held out a paw for the clipboard to check it over. Nick sat and made an effort, for Judy's sake, to take Fang's advice.

Fangmire was one of a pawful of other people who knew, really knew, that Nick and Judy were more than just partners. He was one of an even fewer number that didn't let it color his interactions with them. He seemed to be taking even this intervention in stride. And he knew what he was doing better than Nick did. Even in the hospital.

"Thanks, Captain."

"You saved my partner last time. Checking up is the least I could do, and it's a good thing I did." His smile was brief. "This doesn't come close to making us even."

"What do I do? Tonight? Tomorrow?"

"Wait," Fangmire said. "Be there for her. I'll sort it with Bogo. If there's time, if she's feeling up to it-" he held up a finger. "Then see if you can find out if she learned anything. Don't push her."

\---

Nick was, in fact, on Judy Hopps' trusted admittance list. It came as a surprise to all involved, one that sent warmth fighting with the tingle of unease in his ears as Nick bid Fangmire goodbye and followed an orderly back to the inpatient recovery ward.

The room smelled of antiseptic, of saline solution and his Judy. She was on her back under a thin hospital gown and sheet, breathing unaided, but there was a blood line and a fluid drip in her arm, and a EKG lead clipped to one of her fingers. Her face was drawn in unconscious distress. Nick didn't notice his guide leave.

This was so wrong. She was never supposed to look this vulnerable, this small. He wanted to be close to her, to feel the warmth of her fur and give her his own, to feel her relax in his arms. _Safe_ for Judy was a physical state of being, one Nick chased and guarded jealously because it was such perfect proof of what he could provide for her.

He couldn't give it to her now. Instead, Nick turned the lights off and sat in the one upholstered chair in the corner of the room, keeping his vigil at a distance so he wouldn't wake her.

It was illogical to want to protect her from everything. She would tell him so, when she woke. But he sank into that fantasy of relief anyway, just for tonight. The alternative was to confront the anger roaring right under the surface, and Nick refused to bring that out where Judy would be able to see it.

The EKG kept drawing his ears. Even at rest, Judy's heart beat three times for every one of his. It was a natural heart rate for a rabbit, maybe even slower than normal thanks to her police-academy fitness. But tonight it sounded like it was racing away from him.


	5. Chapter 5

He woke just before she did, before even the nurse came in to make a morning check. His neck was sore from sleeping in the chair, but Nick ignored it so he could be right at her side when she opened her eyes.

"Nick." Her voice was thin. Unused.

"Hi."

She moved her arm, the one with the leads taped to it, and hesitated. "Nick, I'm sorry. It's fuzzy."

He wrapped up her other paw in both of his, dwarfing her, and felt her squeezing him back as tight as she could. It became a quiet contest of wills: his fear over what she had done and what had happened against her knowledge that she had screwed up and her relief at finding him here waiting. She felt weak in his grip. Nick hoped it was the general anesthesia.

Judy watched their paws together, and in time she looked to focus. But her voice was still so slow and flat.

"It was a white ferret. Whistler. He responded to Whistler, I'm sure of it."

"You don't have to do this now, Carrots. Just rest."

"Yes I do. Before I forget." Judy gathered herself. "It's hard as it is. He- he was going east on Market and I called him out, just in case. He looked right at me and smiled."

Nick blew a sigh. "That moment right then is when you call backup, Carrots. I will come for you no matter where I am or what time it is, you know that."

The guilt flashed on her face. She settled back against her pillows. "We went around the corner and he was in my face. He told me I 'should have left it alone,' and I felt the knife."

She'd followed him. Why had she followed him? A chance encounter Nick could accept, even an ambush where she'd had little warning. But she'd known, and gone in anyway. One of Nick's knuckles popped in their shared grip. "You'd better dress it up better than that for Bogo, sweetheart."

"It was stupid."

"It was every rule in the book," Nick said. The criticism hurt him much as he saw it did her. She didn't deserve it right now, not in bed hours after surgery, but what choice did he have? This wasn't some fluke. She'd had a chance to avoid this, and missed it. "Casset just finished drilling threat response into you again. Did you just ignore it?"

She had to chew on that one for a while. "There was no apparent threat. I gave him lead time going into the corner. He surprised me."

"There's no excuse, Judy."

"I couldn't just leave our one lead."

 _"Nothing_ is more important than you staying safe," Nick said, pretending he didn't hear his voice getting sharper. She was supposed to be resting, not getting into this now. "Nothing. No lead, no suspect."

 _No person._ That was Nick otherwise-totally-alone-in-the-world Wilde talking, not Officer Nick Wilde. He'd held the last bit back, but Judy hardened anyway.

She tilted her head to look at him. "You can't let that get in the way, Nick."

"Yes I can, this time. Please, Judy. You had no camera. No taser. You weren't even on duty."

Her tired eyes flashed, and her EKG accelerated. "I can't believe you just said that."

"Carrots-"

 _"No,_ Nick." She made to sit up, and when her body didn't respond and Nick reached for her she glared at him. "This is about more than me. Okay? Yes, I screwed up. But don't ever say things like that." She winced and her eyes fluttered closed again. "I can't put me first. You can't. What we do is too important."

Nick exhaled noisily. He kept his mouth shut, for fear of saying something he'd really regret, and waited for Judy to crack. Her paw, at least, was still viced against his.

"Where is he?" she asked, sixty of her heartbeats later, when he thought she might have drifted off again.

"We don't know. Or I don't. Someone will tell us if he shows."

"No witnesses? No blood trail?"

Nick's stomach rocked. "I'm in the dark. I came straight here."

Judy stared at their paws. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah."

There was a tap of hooves at the door. "Is this a bad time?"

Nick let go of Judy's paw.

Judy's doctor was a zebra with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses perched midway down her nose. She was holding a clipboard and there was a stethoscope around her neck, because of course there was.

She looked at Nick's visitor badge and relaxed a bit. "We didn't think you'd be awake already, Miss Hopps. How are you feeling?"

"Sore," Judy said. "A bit fuzzy. Really tired."

"To be expected," the doctor said. "You had a rough night. If you are tired, don't fight it. You need time to rest and recover. It's okay to sleep." She glanced at Nick. "But before you do, I'll need to examine your dressings."

"Right," Judy muttered. Her knees came up a bit under the sheet. Nick stepped back, but he had to wonder how the doctor would react if she knew it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. Not well, probably. Not that he was sure he wanted to see it right now, either.

"I'll go wait outside."

"I'll need to discuss prognosis with Miss Hopps, as well."

"He can be here for that," Judy said. Her gaze was steady on him. "Anything you need to tell me, I want him to hear, too. He's done a lot for me already."

The zebra looked between them, but like any good doctor she withheld any judgement she might have been passing. "That's fine. Give us ten minutes or so, please?"

Nick closed the door behind him and got his bearings. There was a tiny waiting area at the end of this hallway, with a pot of coffee so watery it barely rated the title. Nick nursed a styrofoam cup anyway and turned the whole mess around in his head.

This was, paws down, the stupidest thing he'd ever seen Judy do. Going after Boots hadn't even come close, because back then he'd at least been there to pull her out of it. Did she understand the risk she'd put herself in? She could have died. Bogo still might wash her out if he learned what she'd done, and Nick knew she'd wish she had died if that happened.

And Nick was angry, even though he never wanted to get to this point with her. He'd done that exactly once, and it had nearly lost it all for them. But she kept pulling reckless stunts, and this time she'd paid for it. Would keep paying for it.

She tried so hard. But she was one bunny, and against the combined danger and prejudice and the pure physical _mass_ of the world it wasn't always enough. Judy was a good person for it, if not the best cop. It was why he did everything he could to hold her up, and now that was even more important. He needed to find a way to get her understand the risks she took, but it couldn't be through anger or raised voices.

That, he could save and channel into something productive, like finding Whistler and dragging him down to evidence. No, he didn't like this at all. They spend all day working the system to find this guy, and he shows up on the wrong side of town, gunning for Judy as soon as she's off-duty and alone? He couldn't have been working alone, then.

"Mr. Wilde, is it?"

"Nick, please." He paused his train of thought and turned to face the zebra behind him in the hallway. "Officer Hopps filled you in, did she?"

"She told me you're her partner, yes."

"So what's the damage?" He followed the doctor back toward Judy's room.

"She has an inch-wide puncture wound to the abdomen, perhaps two inches deep. It went right between anything vital, but it made minor incisions in oblique and transverse muscles. It will take time for them to heal."

"A stomach wound."

"Abdominal. Her stomach's fine."

Nick eyed Judy, who was now propped up with a couple more pillows. "Can she still do her share of the paperwork?"

The doctor's ears flickered. Not tuned to his sense of humor, then. A shame. Judy scowled at him.

"Ideally, she needs bed rest. A week at absolute minimum, with as little walking as possible. She looks to be recovering from the operation very quickly, but we'll keep her here for a few more days to make sure she's stable." She smiled at Judy. "Okay?"

Judy gave a weak one in return. "Thank you, Doctor."

"If you need anything, page the nurses. Otherwise I'll be back in a couple of hours." The zebra indicated the call button at Judy's headboard and left, closing the door behind her.

Nick resumed his post beside Judy's bed. She watched him and reached for his paw when he was back in range.

"When did you get here?"

"Eleven, maybe. You were out of surgery before they let me in."

"Thank you."

"We're going to find Whistler," Nick pressed on, to disguise how much that was pulling at him. "Ask him some nice polite questions."

Judy's grip tightened. "Be careful, Nick. You're the other loose end here."

Nick didn't like that term. "Don't you dare worry about me. Rest."

"I have to worry," Judy said. "You look like a bit of an escapee yourself, with that scrub shirt on."

"I'll change," Nick said. "And I'll bring back clothes, and stuff from the office. Someone on duty will track him down."

"Bring me paperwork, or a computer or something," Judy said. She yawned. "I'll go spare just laying here."

 _"Rest,"_ Nick repeated, for all the good it would do. He got up and planted a reckless, luxuriously slow kiss on Judy's forehead. "I love you."

Yep. Still gave him chills.

"I love you, too." Her eyes were closed.

"More than anything."

She let him go. "I know."

\---

Del Gato was making sympathetic noises that didn't suit him at all.

"Can we send her flowers? Or would she just eat them?"

"She's not going to eat a bouquet. Where do these rumors get started?" Nick shook his head. "She'd rather you send her something to keep busy anyway."

"Wow," Grizzoli said. "Stabbed in the gut and she doesn't even slow down. Don't know how you handle her, Wilde."

Nick sealed the computer case, escaped the razzing and took the stairs to Bogo's office. This was going to be trickier.

He tapped a claw on the open door. "Boss."

"Wilde." Chief Bogo turned from his window. "You holding up?"

"I'm not the one who got stabbed."

Bogo snorted, noncommittal. "I read the initial from Wolfovitz. Has Hopps said anything?"

"She got jumped in an alley," Nick said. "She identified Whistler - Nowak - the mammal of interest in the Garreline case right now."

Bogo loomed. "We got the bulletins. If we pull him in, you two will be the first to know. Why was she alone?"

There it was. "We were off duty. She said she was following a hunch and got surprised."

Bogo looked like he was trying to decide how much of this he could believe. "Any other officer, I'd assume it's terrible luck. Hopps has a history of pushing it, though."

"I was right through remedial with her, Boss." Except Nick didn't have the right to get defensive here. Judy was downright reckless sometimes, more so than Bogo was under any obligation to tolerate. "I'm guilting her about the risks as much as I can."

"Read her the riot act, did you?"

"It's on repeat. I'll get through to her."

"See that you do. I don't need to remind you of the fine line those theoretical officers are walking in that alternate universe of theirs."

 _Don't get defensive. Don't get defensive._ Nick's ears twitched to the open door. "No, sir."

"Get back to it, then. I need you on active duty first thing tomorrow, but for now you can keep an eye on Hopps."

"Thank you, sir."

"And Wilde."

Nick stopped at the door. "Boss?"

"What kind of flowers does she like?"

\---

The scent of earth and fresh country grass hit Nick from the hallway, and a moment later he picked out low voices. Judy had visitors.

There were two more rabbits in here now, their backs to the door when he stopped in it, something unpleasant crawling in his gut. One male, one female. He wore battered overalls, she wore plaid, not unlike the patterns Judy herself wore sometimes. They were close to Judy. Hovering.

Nick was glad he'd showered and changed to duty grey, and that his badge was clearly visible on its chain around his neck, because now he had an unplanned first impression to make. This wasn't how he'd expected to meet Judy's parents.

Judy saw him looking. One ear rotated toward him. He winked to reassure her, before they turned. If there was one thing he was still good at, it was pouring on the measured politeness.

Their eyes still flickered in alarm when they saw him. Nick tried not to take it personally. They'd met him already, technically, at police graduation, but this setting was much more intimate.

"Oh!" The one in overalls tilted his head and looked up at him. "Good to see you, Officer Wilde. Again, technically. Judy's been telling us all about you."

"Not _all_ about me, I hope." Nick ignored Judy's ears dropping behind them and gripped the buck's proffered paw.

"Stu Hopps. This is my wife, Bonnie."

"Ma'am." Nick shook her paw, too, more carefully. He looked up at Judy and raised the case in his free paw. "Computer."

"Oh, good."

"You're going to start working?" her mom asked, and turned back to the bed. "Now?"

"Mom, I have to." She sounded much more awake already. "Nick is my partner. I'll be out for a week. He can't spend all that time keeping an eye on me."

"But honey-"

They crowded back to the bed. Nick went to his chair and opened the briefcase. He happened to agree with her mother. Maybe she'd get through to Judy some way he couldn't.

"I'm working on a case, mom. It won't stop because I got hurt, and other people could get hurt if we just drop it."

"I knew this would happen, I just knew it. Judy, what if it's not a knife next time?"

"No what-ifs. Please."

These are the risks we warned you about, honey. Are you sure this is what you want?"

Nick looked up and braced for an explosion. Questioning Judy Hopps' ability to meet career goals was a good way to get hit.

But she just looked patient. Long-suffering. "It's too late to talk me out of this. I'm helping people. I'm happy."

Not right now, she wasn't. But everyone in the room probably knew that.

"You can rest," her father said. "It's not on you to save the world every day."

"Dad." Judy scowled. "Come on, Nick, tell them."

Nick snapped his muzzle up again.

Of course she'd do this to him, making him choose between siding with her, which she knew he would, and siding with her parents, who wanted what he really wanted.

Sly bunny.

"You're hurt," he told Judy. "You're confined to bed. Supposed to be asleep. You can't even stand right now."

He looked away from her droopy ears, to her parents. "But if she says she's strong enough to work from there, I believe her. She's more stubborn than I am."

"That's not always a good thing," her father said. "You wanted to play football in high school, Jude, remember?" He nodded to Nick. "That's how she broke her ankle."

"I wanted a lot of things, dad. This is real."

The computer offered escape, something Nick could influence without feeling conflicted. Judy's parents were taking this pretty well, all things considered, but he suspected they didn't know just how crazy Judy's job got sometimes. They knew about the Night Howler case, but Judy said she'd never told them the specifics of her involvement. They probably didn't know about Boots at all. That was for her and Nick to deal with.

And he couldn't step too far in here. Her parents were skittish around him already. Even after months with Judy, all that time with a rabbit so recklessly unafraid of what he was, he could still spot the tells on her family, the little motions of the nose and ears, the occasional scent of unease that to their credit they seemed to master quickly. He couldn't make that any worse.

It was for the best they considered him a co-worker, a business associate. He was more than that, of course, and might want to show it, but this was the most direct demonstration yet of why he and Judy had to keep their relationship quiet.

Their bulletins had turned up nothing. Whistler clearly knew what he was doing, more than Weaselton. He wouldn't be showing his face for a few days at least. The upside was Bogo had apparently seen Nick's hearsay testimony as enough reason to kick Whistler's watch orders straight up to an arrest warrant, on suspicion of assaulting a peace officer. Nick couldn't wait to serve that one.

Judy's parents fretted, doctors checked in and Nick watched her whenever he looked up from the screen. He was into financial documents and Garreline's client records, trying to sort out how and where someone like Whistler could get inside. This was something Judy could help with, and would probably want to. She wasn't Financial Crimes, but she had a better eye for some patterns than Nick did.

His radio beeped, competing with the EKG.

"Dispatch, Wilde."

The rabbits looked over at him. He watched Judy and raised the pawset. "This sensitive, Dispatch?"

"Not really. There's someone at HQ you're going to want to talk to."

Nick stood, balancing the computer on one paw. "Nowak?"

"No, it's Allan Reed. He's alone."

Nick caught Judy's frown. But it was progress all the same. "On my way."

He brought the computer over to Judy and placed it on the swing-away desk. She wasn't sitting upright enough to use it yet, but the next nurse would be able to help her out. "Want to stare at some transactions?"

Judy seemed to ignore the refreshed concern from her parents. "Can do."

"Can you give us a moment?" Nick asked the Hopps. "We need to discuss the case."

Stu blinked. "Oh, right. Come on, Bonnie."

"Don't strain yourself, honey," Judy's mother warned as they left. Judy rolled her eyes and the door snapped shut.

"Sorry about them."

"They want what's best for you," Nick said. "I agree with them, but-" he indicated the computer. "I can't stop you, any more than they can."

He had the satisfaction of seeing her go cautious: more so, he liked to think, than even her parents could make her look after all. "I'll take it easy."

"If you don't, I'll be after you, too." She was still shaking off the fog of surgery and she already wanted to get back into it. Nick's instinct was to lock the doors and curl up around her until she healed, but he had a job to do - and she wouldn't let him keep her from doing hers. "Just be careful. Find us our angle."

"What was it about the case?" she asked.

"You heard. Reed wants to talk, so I'll go find out what it is. Whistler is warrant-bait, too, probably thanks to the Chief."

Judy placed a paw on the sheets covering her, over her stomach. "Good."

Nick hadn't seen what had happened to her. "You okay?"

Her paws went to the sheet at her shoulders. "Do you want to see?"

"Not now." The thought of a knife in her gut still made him queasy. He wanted - needed - to deal with that, but this wasn't the place or time. Nick dropped an ear to the door. "Are you hurting?"

"Not much. They've given me painkillers, and I'm not moving."

He reckoned he had a few minutes left before her parents got really curious. He leaned close again and kissed her properly, felt her shaky breath against his muzzle.

"I thought this was about the case."

"You're all caught up. I just wanted some privacy."

Her blunt little claws dug into the back his neck.


	6. Chapter 6

Allan Reed waited in an interview room, drumming his fingers on the table. Nick looked through the little mirrored window set into the door.

"Has he said anything, Higgins?"

The hippo duty officer shrugged. "Not that I've heard. You going in there without your backup?"

Nick hid a wince. "My backup is in inpatient recovery with a stab wound."

"I meant Marki. Chief attached her to you for the duration, while Hopps is out." Higgins looked down at Nick. "Sorry about that, by the way."

Nick waved it away, hesitant to try any banter concerning Judy with someone who didn't already know. Marki, at least, was the some of the first good news he'd had in a few days. She was _reliable_. "Yeah, I am going in there. Step in if he attacks me, will you?"

He left Higgins looking dubious and opened the door.

Reed smelled nervous, probably not least because he was now locked in a room with a technically plainclothes fox.

"I remember you," he said. "Where's your partner?"

Everyone was going to ask about this, weren't they? "Out. You're stuck with me." He sat on the far side of the table, square with Reed, and stacked his paws on the case file in an exaggerated non-threat display. "Where's your lawyer?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm here."

Nick cocked an eyebrow.

"It's like he's disappeared," Reed said. His whiskers twitched. "He's not answering his phone, or his email. His firm office downtown is closed. There's nobody there."

"How did you get downtown?"

"I told your officers I needed to be sure, and they took me there while I was on my way here. It seems it was for the best. I worry something's happened to him."

"Have you contacted the firm itself?"

"Yes. The receptionist says she's looking into it and that they'll get someone else in touch with me as soon as they can."

"She doesn't work at the same location?"

"I saw what I saw, officer. Apparently not."

Nick had no love for Baird based on their brief snipings together, but this was enough to make him uncomfortable. Reed's instincts were good, at least, if his first thought was to get back in touch with the police. And with Judy hurt, it made sense to take strange news like this seriously. Someone was doing a good job of jerking ZPD around on this one already; the last thing they needed was suspects and witnesses getting pulled into the same trouble.

"Can you tell me what he was working on?"

"Research for my case, I understand."

A non-answer. Fine. "You haven't received any strange visitors? Mail? Phone messages?"

"Just ZPD officers, twice a day."

"We can't do anything about a private citizen's private movements," Nick said. "You'll have to work out whatever it is with him."

Reed looked thoughtful and less than reassured. Nick didn't know if this next part was legal, strictly speaking. But the last time they'd shocked Reed, they'd made progress. And he felt it was his place to disclose it. Whistler was still running around out there, after all.

"My partner was stabbed last night. She's in the hospital."

Reed recoiled, and looked genuinely shocked. "That's... I'm sorry."

"She identified the perp as someone who matches Nowak's description, and now he's gone to ground again. You can imagine we're all a little tense right now."

Reed winced.

"If there's anything more you can tell us about him, now is the time. I can get you something to sign if you're willing to speak without your attorney present."

Pika fear stank. Nick wanted to clear his sinus, but he masked his distaste as reluctance. This was as shifty a move as anything he'd ever pulled back on the streets, the way he was leaning on Reed's perceptions. His lawyer, Baird, would do his best to pin Nick to the wall for it. Oh well. He wasn't here to object.

"I don't know if he's-"

Nick held up a paw. "Sign first. This needs a paper trail."

"Right." Reed nodded. "Of course."

Nick cracked the door and escaped. He blew a couple deep breaths through his nose.

"Progress?" Higgins asked.

"Maybe."

"That was fast."

"Natural charm." Nick ducked into the observation room for an appropriately-scaled clipboard. When he emerged, there was a snow leopard standing beside the evidence room door, peering through the window, her tail sweeping lazy arcs. She nodded in greeting.

"Hi, Sergeant." Marki was a familiar face. Nick hadn't put much stock in companionship for most of his life, but right now her presence was helpful. She was so level-headed as to be severe, a good balance to the disquiet growing in his head.

"How's Hopps?"

"Stable. Working, if you can believe it."

"I can." She cracked the door and led the way back inside.

Reed flicked between them, probably wondering at Nick's upgrade. Marki posted up behind Nick's chair and looked to him. She outranked him, technically, but she seemed willing to let him take the lead.

Nick gave Reed his clipboard and let him scribble.

"So, Nowak." Reed chewed his lip. "I don't know if anything I know will be new information. I already submitted that." He gestured at the case file. "He wanted close personal cooperation to set up accounts. He offered payment to keep it simple and quiet, far more than Garreline usually charges for that sort of work."

"Is 'simple and quiet' not the usual procedure?" Nick asked.

"Our firm is discreet," Reed said. "We're willing to grant our customers concessions, as long as those concessions fall within finance statutes and they can demonstrate they're not doing anything illegal."

"The bankers who handled the actual accounting died. Your account holder is now a deadly assault suspect, at large."

Reed closed his beady eyes. "None of that happened until after we started the accounts. They were empty before Winston or any of the others disappeared." He looked at Marki again. "I didn't do anything illegal."

"Your underlings might have," Nick said, upping the pressure. He sorted through the paperwork. "Look at it this way. Would your firm have offered Nowak any service if he walked in the front door without a truckload of cash to sweeten the deal?"

"Again, discretion is-"

"Petty theft. Larceny. Loitering." Nick held up Whistler's file and tossed it on the table so it landed with a heavy slap. "Three arrests. No taxable assets for the last five years."

"Discrimination would lose us our business license," Reed said. He squeaked a bit when he got scared. "He had the money. Fine: it was a poor decision working with him, but I daresay it was a legal one when we made it."

That was for the auditors to determine. In any case, Nick had Reed more or less where he wanted him.

"And suspected deadly assault. What did Nowak change his mind about?"

It took a minute for Reed to catch up. "At the end? He was going to start another account but he backed out. Vanished."

"Everyone attached to this case is disappearing, Reed. We can't fight it unless we have something we can move on."

"We've given you all of his account activity. There's nothing else to hand over."

"Did he say anything? Mention any names? Times? Locations?"

"No, he stayed focused. He would give us account numbers off invoices, confirm the new ones were active, and leave. We just verified transactions."

"What was on the invoices? What was the stationery like? Every little bit helps now."

"I don't-" Reed pinched the bridge of his nose. "It was anonymous-looking. The kind you'd get at office supply stores. When they weren't blank they had innocuous construction material on them. PVC. Plastic sheeting. And chemicals. Bleach. Ammonia nitrate something."

For the first time, Nick caught a shift in Marki's subtle presence. He rotated an ear.

"Okay," Nick said. "Anything else?"

"He wore a suit. It wasn't like he came in off the street corner. He looked presentable, even if the clothes were probably rented." Reed sniffed. "The shoulders were too wide."

"Did he give you any contact information at all?" Marki asked.

"Nothing besides the email. He was particular about that."

"Thank you, Director." Marki stepped forward to the table. "A moment, Wilde?"

In the hallway, her tail lashed once. "Ammonium Nitrate."

"Reed didn't say exactly that, I don't think."

"It's a common component of high-yield explosive," Marki said anyway. "If Nowak has a fuel substrate, he could be building bombs."

"What did you do last life, again?"

Marki's ears dropped. " _Focus_ , Wilde."

"Financial mastermind, hitman and now explosives expert?" Nick frowned through the one-way window at Reed. "Nowak's one ferret. We think he might actually be homeless."

"This is a case of better safe than sorry," Marki said. "We need eyes on as soon as we can."

"Reed doesn't have anything," Nick said. "Unless tech dragged something out of the email, but even I know that's easy to hide."

"Probably not," Marki agreed. "We can move on this, though. Good work."

Nick didn't feel good about it, now that the questioning was over. He'd conned the banker, and hard. It wasn't the way things were done. Police were supposed to question, not interrogate.

"It's not even about him."

"Sometimes it's not," Marki said, and followed his gaze. "But he made his choices."

\---

Whistler's last known employment was in the shipping sector, down at the docks. What his old foreman could remember of him didn't seem to be fond.

"Damn ferret usually screwed up his work more often than he fixed it," the beaver said from the steps of his trailer office. "We cut him in the first round the last time the unions renegotiated."

"He worked on the cranes themselves?" Nick asked.

"Someone has to get up there when the mechanisms foul up. Smaller mammals are faster at it."

"Does he have a company record? Did he ever deal with materials?"

"Not that I know of. If we still have it, I'll get you his file."

That file, such as it was, led them to an overland freight yard, which led to a courier company that operated as a front for crime-family communication. The capybara at the desk didn't recognize Whistler, didn't recognize Nick, and with two predator badges in his face he'd started to get confrontational. They'd left him alone.

After that, Whistler well and truly vanished, and Nick could see Happytown from the point at which the ferret had last existed on the public record. It wasn't a good sign.

They prowled in their cruiser anyway, just in case. He'd popped up before, but the more Nick thought about the night Judy got hurt the more he was starting to worry they had been intentional. Everything else Whistler had done in this case smelled of planning, of cooperation. Nick didn't like getting played.

"Still nothing on Baird?"

"No," Marki said from the passenger seat. "And Nowak's email is a bust." They were her first words in hours. Judy talked a lot more, but then they had things to talk about.

"We expected that, though." Nick turned away from the Happytown perimeter and started them back toward Precinct One.

She checked the computer. "Tracking chemicals will take longer, but we do have access to those records."

"Racing the clock," he pointed out.

This was when Judy would come back with some faux-exasperation about his snippiness and they'd talk through what was bothering them. But Marki wasn't Judy, and she deserved better than Nick's dejection, even if it was authentic. It was about more than them, Judy had said. He couldn't afford to distract anyone.

"Sorry, Sergeant."

Her glance was brief and unreadable. "You're not wrong."


	7. Chapter 7

Marki had volunteered to sort the check into the chemical sales, and that bothered Nick.

Not so much that she was doing his paperwork, but that she knew. Sure, Marki seemed to be better at reading mammals than most, but he didn't like how much of himself was getting through to the outside now.

Judy's room was dark, but for the reading light she'd angled over her shoulder so she could see the keyboard more clearly. She looked up when he knocked on the doorjamb, and her sudden quiet happiness pulled at his heart.

"Good shift?"

"It wasn't supposed to be a shift." Nick crossed the room, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. "Informative, though. You're going to give yourself a headache."

"I'm okay."

"Okay all over?"

"I'm sore. Spent more time than I would have liked sleeping. The doctors say that's to be expected."

"Where are your parents?"

"Out picking up dinner. I-"

He kissed her while he had the time. She huffed against his muzzle.

"- missed you, too."

"I wish I could hug you properly." Nick pulled the chair - now one of a matched pair at Judy's bedside - closer and sat so he could be next to her. "What have you got?"

"The tech team hasn't gotten anything out of these numbers about where the accounts came in from. The money just appeared. Whistler didn't make any mistakes, as far as I can tell. Sorry."

"It's okay," Nick said. "Reed was a bit more helpful. But his lawyer, Baird? He's MIA."

"That's fishy."

"Reed's spooked. And frankly, I am, too."

Of course, Reed had been less spooked this morning, before Nick had stared leaning on him. He decided not to share that part with Judy, at least not here. They could talk about it when they were really alone again.

"Whistler's not that good," she said.

"He got at you."

Judy's ears dropped, and Nick immediately wished he could cram the words back in his mouth.

"Sometimes I make stupid mistakes," she said. "Maybe Baird's not immune, either."

He worked careful claws into the muscles of Judy's neck. "Sorry."

Judy shook her head and closed her eyes at his attentions. "I'll see what I can figure out. What else did Reed give you?"

"Whistler had construction materials on some of his invoices. We looked into his background. He used to work in imports, down at the docks. But his employment dead-ends right next to Happytown."

"Great." She looked up at him. "We?"

"Marki's no you, but she's not bad at her job, either." Had Judy been sitting at this awkward angle all day? He moved a finger and thumb to the base of one of her ears and smiled as she exhaled loud enough to hear. "She thinks Whistler might be messing around with explosives. You should follow that, too. Look at commerce records for ammonium nitrate. I'll bet you can beat Marki and the tech boys to it."

"I'm no hacker." Judy tapped at her keyboard and frowned. "We have this stuff at home, on the farm. This is regulated?"

"It's fertilizer," her dad said from the doorway. "You just have to be careful not to get tractor diesel on it or-"

Nick aborted his massage, so quickly his claws nearly caught Judy's ear. But Stu's eyes were wide. The rabbit reached over and flipped on the lights, making them squint at the glare.

"You okay, Jude?"

She hadn't seen it, so she frowned at his careful tone. "Fine."

"What are you doing?"

"Casework," she said.

"Not you," Stu said, and stared at Nick. "What are you doing?"

"Working with my partner."

Stu snorted, incredulous. "Her ears don't need your help, fox. Not like that."

Judy whipped around to look at Nick, the dawning emotion on her face carrying everything she no longer had the time to say out loud. "Dad."

Judy had told him about her parents' work with Gideon Grey, about how they'd put a longtime fear of foxes far enough aside to work with one. It was a less-total version of what Judy had done in the days she met Nick, and that made sense: a business relationship didn't require the same level of trust she'd built for him.

And sure enough, they hadn't been ready for this. There was a limit. Nick sat rooted, ears back. Now their secret was at risk, and all he could do was ride along. It wasn't even his fight now. This would be up to Judy, and he hated himself for putting her on the spot like this.

"What did he do?" her father asked.

"It's nothing, Dad. None of your business."

"He's a _predator."_

"He's _right here,"_ Judy said. "I thought you and mom had learned something-"

"We trusted you," Stu cut her off, speaking this time to Nick. He stalked into the room, up short to the other side of Judy's bed so he could put his paws on her shoulder. Even at his full height, the tips of his ears were barely to Nick's eye level. "You know we had a long talk about foxes when we came to your graduation? She vouched for you. Called you a friend. And now you've got your claws on her when she can't even leave the bed-"

_"Dad!"_

This time Nick did look at her, because he could hear all too well now when she was about to do something reckless. He shifted, and Stu reacted with the jerky focus of fear. Nick could smell it.

"Judy."

She whirled on him. _"No,_ Nick. I'm not going to hide from this. I can't let you try, either."

Her father's face darkened. "Judith..."

 _"Six months,_ Dad." Her chin came up, and her validation was so powerful Nick felt his own spine straighten. "At least. So if you're going to be mad at him, you're going to have to be mad at me, too-"

"I'm not mad, Jude, I'm scared sick-"

Her eyes flashed and she raised her voice over his. "-because I'm just as in love with him as he is with me."

Stu flinched and looked even angrier, if that were possible. He swung back to Nick. "That true, fox?"

"His name is Nick."

Nick stood, slowly, almost making a display of the motion. His head felt far too cluttered for a yes-or-no question he already knew the answer to. But two decades of caution and - yes - almost six months now of an overpowering love and fear and desire to keep Judy safe still fought back when he tried to push past it and say what he needed to. This could ruin her ties with her family. It could reduce her to what he had become back as a kit, before she'd found him.

But she'd chosen her side just now, plunged ahead because she thought he was worth the risk. He wouldn't deny her that sacrifice. Didn't want to.

He just hoped she would find it in her heart to forgive him when they both realized what they'd done.

"Every word."

Stu's ears rotated full front to catch the admission. His jaw worked. "Time you left, I think."

"No, dad-"

Judy tried to sit up and gasped in pain. Nick and Stu moved at the same time, to opposite sides of her pillow, but Nick froze at the sudden snapped warning.

_"Stop."_

They both looked at Judy.

"It's not your call." She looked between them, her paw on her stomach. "Dad, stop it. I know you're not speciesist. You're better than this."

"He's a _fox,_ Jude."

"He's _my_ fox. My partner. I'm not scared of him, not ever. Why can't you see that?"

But Stu was shaking his head, eyes terrified and baleful and not at all like prey anymore. His paws hovered: one protective over Judy, and the other right above the panic call button that would summon hospital staff in a hurry. "You need to go, before I do something we'll all regret."

It was retreat. Surrender to the status quo. Fighting it for one of the first times in his life still felt alien. That was Judy's work, drawing out the resolve he'd never had on his own. But they couldn't force the issue here. Nick couldn't bring himself to heap more damage on her now, not when it could be permanent.

"I'll go."

"Nick, please."

"For now, we all need to be alone," Nick lied. He couldn't touch her now, or kiss her goodnight the way he'd hoped to. He searched her face, wishing he had the time to say what he needed to. "I'll be back, Carrots. As soon as I can."

Stu flared in his periphery, so shocked and frightened and angry that Nick could feel the heat from here. But Nick was angry, too, and already desperately lonely. If her father was going to deprive him of their time together, he was going to get the last word.

And he did. He left his paperwork and Judy's computer and didn't look back until he was in the hallway and he'd fixed the languid mask he showed the public back in place.

Judy's mother was coming the other way, her arms loaded with bags of take-out food, some variety of roasted vegetables. She smiled when she saw him.

"Leaving so soon, Officer Wilde?"

"It's been a long day," he said, feeling like dirt for how easily the con came. But it was better she learn from her family than from him. He'd done enough damage. "Judy needs her rest."

"Maybe we'll see you tomorrow, then," she said. "Thank you for being there for her. It helps, it really does."

He couldn't say anything to that. He carried on through the hallways and reception, past Lowitzki the security guard and the whole waiting room, where it felt like everyone watched him go.

\---

It didn't sink in until the next afternoon.

Marki had checked in a couple times but otherwise let him work. He'd lined up vendors to go talk to about the ammonium-fertilizer-whatever, with priority on the pawful that had sold some in the same timeframe Whistler had set up accounts at Garreline. And Baird still hadn't shown. Nick was working on a bulletin with the Chief's blessing. They needed to get as many of the case's moving parts under control as they could before more of them turned up injured.

So when Bogo called him into his office, Nick didn't waste time. He locked his computer and went straight there.

The Chief was waiting right outside, leaning on the wall next to the threshold. He led the way inside and motioned Nick to shut the door.

"What have you got, boss?"

Bogo waited until Nick was seated to tap a hoof on the little packet on his desk. "I was hoping you could tell me, Wilde, since I've been directed to give you court documents with your name on them."

Nick choked on his next breath. "Sorry?"

"I'm sure I don't want to know, but since it involves two of my least-controllable officers I feel compelled to ask:" Bogo spun the paper around so Nick could read it right-side up. "What happened last night at Zootopia General?"

It was his name, all right, and the applicant party line read Stuart and Bonnie Hopps.

The fear won out over the anger or disbelief: fear at having something so unavoidably legal aimed at him for the first time in his life; fear at what this meant for Judy if he wasn't able to go back.

"Nothing that would rate going to court over. This is overreaction."

"Wilde," Bogo rumbled.

"Fine," Nick said. His ears dropped. This was getting out of control. "You didn't want to know, but here it is: Judy and I are close. All right? Close enough that her dad took exception to what my paws were doing last night."

"I don't-" Bogo stopped to sigh and take a more level tone. "I don't have the authority to countermand this. All I do have is the obligation you've forced on me." He stood and started to pace. "This cannot interfere with police business any longer. Am I clear?"

The order had a little checkmark next to 'atavistic harassment.' So much for the gleaming utopia that put aside its collective differences. "Can they even do this? Judy is a legal adult."

Bogo turned to stare him down. "Answer the question."

"I didn't do anything to warrant restraint."

"I'm not the one you have to convince," Bogo snapped. He dropped a hoof on the desk. Some of the lighter items it held rattled. "In the meantime, all you have demonstrated is that you're making my job harder. Your actions have consequences that reach beyond the little bubble of your personal life, and you need to get that through your skull _yesterday._ "

Nick clicked his teeth together. "Yes, sir."

"There are still sympathetic judges around," Bogo said, softer, after he'd decided Nick had indeed got it. "But you know that. This is an old loophole, from before the atavism reforms. It won't last long. Once Hopps can walk again she can clear this with one visit."

It would last long enough. Nick fought the bitterness, the helplessness, because he knew what was coming next.

"But there's no going around this, Wilde," Bogo said. "Not one inch. You have to stay away from her and let her do it herself, or this gets more public than any of us wants."

"Does she know?"

"I don't know."

"What am I supposed to do? Who will take my place?"

"Fangmire will be pausing a lot of work I'd really rather he continue on. I suggest you thank him profusely if he ever figures it out," Bogo said. "Your job is to focus, and find Whistler and Baird. You get us the ferret's location, we'll get you a warrant. But it needs to happen soon."

"I'll do my best, sir."

Bogo gave him the court documents. "And keep your nose clean, or I'll have to seriously consider firing you. I'd rather not lose a good officer to something so petty, so if you've got some friends off the force you might want to go stick your head in the sand whenever you're not on duty."

Nick couldn't blame Bogo for hammering it home, but he hadn't expected it to make him feel so cold and lost so quickly. His armor couldn't stop this, not when he didn't know if Judy was even aware of what had happened. He slipped off the chair and made for the door.

"And Wilde."

Nick turned.

"Service of order of restraint is hereby witnessed." Bogo was solemn, almost sad. "Don't make anyone here come after you because of it. For her sake. Don't make me tell her they had to do that."


	8. Chapter 8

Nick had gone two months after the Boots case without so much as a thought for the fringe he used to call home.

But now that he was walking around downtown, letting the traffic and noise hammer at him in a bid for relief from his own thoughts, he found himself wishing he could sink back in. If nothing else, things had been simpler then. No one had paid him mind long enough to worry about where he went or who he saw, not really. Nobody had counted on him to catch a criminal that had eluded all their monitoring so far. Nobody had held him to 3,000 feet away from Zootopia General at all times, 'barring bodily injury that requires emergency medical attention.'

He stopped at that imaginary line, right in the middle of the sidewalk, and looked up at the facade. Why was he really down here? This felt like something he'd had to do, but now the voice of reason in his head, the one that sounded like Judy, told him he was just wasting valuable time.

He wasn't exactly mad at her parents, not yet. He'd dealt with that type of prejudice his entire life, and to be honest he'd expected something like this from them at first, if not as severe as what they'd come up with. He'd hoped he would be able to show them what Judy meant to him, what they gave each other. Even if it took a while. Now he didn't even have that.

But to hold it against them would only make things worse. The root of the problem was Judy being in the hospital in the first place. Whistler had put her there, and putting him away was the first step to fixing this whole mess.

He'd been nearby, according to a couple of local shopkeepers who occasionally passed tidbits on to the police. Just a few blocks over. Nick checked the file on his phone and wandered that way.

Flora & Fauna was, in a clever subversion of absolutely nothing, a gardening supply store. There was a pig behind the counter, who looked up from some plant he was trimming as the door chime went off and frowned.

"Can I help you?"

Nick fished his badge necklace out from under his shirt. "Nick Wilde, ZPD. We got a call earlier today about a person of interest who came through here."

"Oh. Oh, right. Sorry." The shopkeeper's frown disappeared. "I didn't recognize you at first, out of uniform and everything. ZPD's first fox and all."

For the first time in two days, something bounced off of Nick instead of cutting. It was almost a relief.

"There was a white ferret, head to toe," the pig said. "He matched the description from the bulletin we got."

"When was he here?"

"About an hour ago, right after I got back from a late lunch. But he didn't stick around long."

"Was he looking for anything specific?"

"Topsoil. He wanted to arrange a shipment of it, but the volume he was looking for would have cleaned us out, so I pointed him to my distributor."

"Can you show me?"

The proprietor came around from behind the counter and led Nick deeper into the shop, past stacks of paw tools and shelves full of seed packets and watering cans. The back wall opened into a bright little greenhouse, with various plants growing in live display.

"It's the stuff we use here," the pig said. He trailed a hoof through the nearest planter. "Locally-sourced, high-nitrogen with extra phosphorous."

It came in big plastic bags and, as far as Nick could tell, was exactly what it looked like: expensive dirt.

"He didn't say what he needed it for?"

"Growing something, I'd assume. Not much other use for it, but it does its job mighty well."

"Okay." Nick straightened. "He didn't ask anything about Ammonium Nitrate?"

"Oh, the fertilizer? No, he didn't. You have to go to one of the bigger chains for that, though. We can't sell it ourselves, not without a license." He pointed to a corner, where a little pile of something put off a pungent aroma. "It's all small-batch organic stuff here. It starts as leavings from the kitchens around the corner, mostly. Want to see?"

"I'll take your word for it." Nick fought the sensation of a lead slipping out of his claws again. This was important, whatever it meant. Judy would be putting it all together by now, he was sure. "I need the contact info for your soil supplier. And any info this ferret left with you."

"Sure."

Nick took the scraps of paper the pig gave him and stepped back out into the sunlight. The phone rang twice while he stared at the hospital.

"Progress?"

"Fine, thanks, how are you?" Nick fought a grimace. Marki would, if nothing else, keep him focused. "I followed up on that sighting downtown. The staff here says Whistler might have gone to a larger supplier for whatever he was looking for."

"It wasn't chemical fertilizers, then."

"Topsoil, apparently. But who does that?" He pushed down on the tightness in his throat and turned his back on the hospital, to make his way toward the train station. "Who stabs a cop and then hangs around long enough to buy some dirt?"

"It could be misdirection," Marki said. "Bulk purchases to cover tracks or hide other activity. Send me the address for the distributor and I'll check it against the chemical registry."

He rattled it off.

"It does sell nitrates," Marki said. "No large purchases in the last two weeks."

"Are we going to watch them?"

"I'll put it on the short list."

"Right."

"Say hi to Hopps for me."

The line went dead. Nick stared at his phone and supposed he should be grateful to Bogo for keeping that little development quiet.

"Right."

\---

He'd been through his apartment maybe twice since Judy had been hurt, but this time he wasn't rushing around to get back to her as soon as he could, or numb with shock over what her parents had done. Without the distraction, his bedroom rang with its stillness and his own ragged breathing.

Of course the dreams would start again now.

Judy had been there, alone in his field of vision, trapped beyond his reach at the end of the dim, featureless corridor, and all he could hear were Boots' heavy footsteps coming for them.

It was a new one, and even more unsettling than the usual if only for its surrealism. And there was no one he could talk to for the first time in a long time. Nick couldn't even remember how he'd dealt with nightmares back when he'd been on his own. It had been a moot point for so long now.

He left his sheets behind and moved to the couch, where Judy's presence was just a touch stronger. It was a small comfort, absent the warmth and quiet motion that he always associated with her. But it did help.

The worst part was not knowing if she was okay. If the nightmares were back for him, they probably were for her, too, and the thought of her waking up alone, actually trapped in her bed because of her injury, made his stomach turn in fear. Her parents were there, and they would want to help her, but they'd locked her away from the only one who really understood. Forced her to endure it alone.

Nick heard the staccato sound of claws puncturing upholstery, but for the moment he was beyond caring about anything except the image of his rabbit, fixed clear in his mind in front of the tears that made his vision blur.

This was where they needed to be, as soon as they could be together again. Nick was considering that outcome a certainty, only a matter of time. They wouldn't talk, or kiss, or even make love, attractive as that notion was to consider for the first time. He just wanted her arms around him, squeezing him back.

He'd never felt this lonely before she crashed into his life.

His phone made him jump. He could see it in the reflection from the window, lighting up the ceiling with the incoming call screen. He padded over and sighed. This was one he couldn't ignore.

"Sergeant, it's four in the morning."

"We got another warrant hit on Whistler," Marki said. "Are you good to move?"

Nick woke up in the space of seconds, pushing his thoughts of Judy to the safe corner of his mind. "I am now."

"I'll be to your door in five minutes."

He just accepted she knew where he lived and looked for pants.

Marki had a cruiser idling right out front. Nick climbed into the passenger seat and she drove off just a little faster than was necessary. Probably.

"Where?"

"Tundratown."

"That's exactly where I want to go at four AM. And I left my thermals upstairs."

"There's a spare parka in the back," Marki said.

Nick looked, and felt a bit better.

"Your distributor made a cash sale last night to a ferret driving a white panel truck," Marki said. She rotated the dashboard computer so Nick could see grainy low-light video of a warehouse loading dock. There was a delivery-style truck with a faded green chevron on its side backed up to it. "It just showed up again."

In other words, she'd been staring at jam-cam footage for who knows how long, just in case. Nick wondered - and not for the first time - if Marki slept at the station sometimes.

"Nice of this to just fall in our laps," he said.

Marki gave him a look. "Don't question lucky breaks too much."

"I do, though." Why was he spilling this now? "Last lucky sighting we had on this guy landed my partner in the hospital."

They were already through the tunnel from downtown. Nick let her drive. A burst of icy flakes rattled off the windshield as they came out into the snow. Marki hit the fog lamps and Nick could see the overnight storm in full swing.

The computer took them to a warehouse down near the waterfront, where lots of food and consumables companies sent their traffic to take advantage of the natural refrigeration. This building was smaller than most and seemed to be locked up for the night as they drove past. But Marki pointed to the recent tire tracks through the snow at the gate, and as they made the corner they caught a glimpse of a white delivery truck at the back. They didn't see anyone, not that Nick really expected to.

Marki parked on the opposite side of the block, just far enough out on the corner so they could see the entrance without drawing too much attention, and killed the engine.

"Is he still there?"

"Someone is." Marki dimmed the screen on the computer as far as it would go. This, at least, they could keep on as long as its battery and cellular radio held out. But the heaters were tied to the engine, and without them it was going to get cold in here. Nick reached back for the borrowed coat and envied Marki her thicker fur.

There were three figures onscreen. It was tough to get subtle cues from video moving at two frames a second, but they appeared to be unloading things into the building. There was a huge brown bear, and a pig, and an armadillo in a thick coat doing something in the truck's cab. No sign of Whistler. Three on two wasn't terrible if it came to a fight, especially with the element of surprise, but that bear was already making Nick nervous.

"Do you have a plan for backup?" he asked.

"No interdict unless Whistler shows," Marki said. "This activity could be legal. For now we're observing."

So they observed. Marki watched the entrance; Nick watched the video. He thought he could make out lengths of PVC piping, and a pallet of bags that the pig didn't seem interested in trying to lift.

Nick almost didn't see it at first. The fourth animal flickered in and out of the edge of the frame at first, dressed in a dark coat that obscured most of its shape. But when he stalked right into the middle of the camera's field, gesturing angrily at the arguing workers, the white fur on his head and paws was unmistakable.

Nick felt the fur on his neck shifting. "It's him."

Marki looked. "It might be him."

Nick's teeth were on edge. "How many other white ferrets are there triggering warrant hits in Tundratown right now?"

Her ears swiveled at his tone. "Don't go spare on me, Wilde. I need your head on straight."

"I'm fine."

She raised an eyebrow at his ears and waited.

Nick dragged them back forward. "You know what happened to Judy."

She watched him, and the way he looked between the surveillance footage and the dashcams. Then she donned a radio earpiece, pointed at a pair of binoculars on the floor next to his paws and cracked the door. "Bring those."


	9. Chapter 9

The building they'd parked behind had a street-level fire escape that led all the way up the roof, but there was nothing else to appreciate about the setting right now. It was freezing up here in the wind, even with a parka.

Marki crouched in the lee of a climate unit and checked the night-ops scope on a carbine she'd pulled from somewhere.

If they left the warehouse, they'd see them come through the main entrance. Nick knew that. He'd known it back in the car. That had been their plan from the start, more or less: wait to see if Whistler was with them. But they'd spotted him already, which meant Marki had them up here for something else.

And sure enough, she was watching him. "I'd rather you get it all out so it stops distracting you from your job," she said. "Nothing personal."

"Sorry, sergeant."

"No mics up here, Wilde. Whatever you need to say is off the record."

This was two authority figures who did this for him now. Fangmire knew and hinted at it, ever since this started. But Marki had left him and Judy alone. She preferred to keep things professional, which Nick definitely respected. She obviously wanted - needed - him at his best for the job at paw, and this was apparently the fastest way to that.

"I think you already know," he said. "About me and Judy being together."

"I had guessed." Marki's smile was barely there. She didn't even look over at him. But compared to some of the other reactions Nick had received of late, that understated one did a good job of banishing the rooftop's creeping cold.

It felt good to spill it, to explain how it started with the savagery case almost by accident, and solidified over the course of their rapid investigation into the Boots murders. Nick left out the coping, the arguments; the quiet moments they'd learned to share. But he had to tell Marki what he could about the case. It would be important.

"Her parents went to court with some old holdover that got through the predator amendments. Bogo had to give me the restraining order. I can't even see her now."

She did look over at that. "Extreme."

"You think?" Nick stared through his glasses at the darkened facade opposite. "I keep telling myself grabbing Whistler won't put it all back the way it was, but it's about the only thing I can do. He's the one who stabbed her and left her for dead, and he's the only one I seem to be able to reach right now."

Marki's long tail curled around her crouched legs. "As long as you do it for the right reasons."

"Giving Judy peace isn't reason enough?"

"I didn't say that wasn't valid. But you can't let it get personal. You make mistakes that way."

Nick bristled. Yes, shutting down Whistler was now more selfish than it should be. Judy had told him that.

But he couldn't live without her. Before she came along, he'd had almost nothing. Judy gave him purpose and focus and someone to love with all his heart for the first time in most of his life. Now that he'd found that, Nick was terrified of losing it. He had to protect her with everything he could, and he'd nearly failed her already. Someone had tried to take her from him.

Marki saw the conviction on his muzzle. "Vengeance is not always justice, Wilde. It's a fuzzy line, but you have to stay on the right side of it."

"I don't want to go back to what I used to be."

"It could also make you something you weren't before," Marki said. "Every decision counts."

"But-"

The wind carried the rumble of an engine turning over to them. Marki sighted up so fast he thought she might have spotted a threat, and he followed suit with his own binoculars.

The truck was crunching through the snow to the main gate. Whistler was walking alongside; Nick could make out the pig and the armadillo in the cab. As it pulled up to the fence the bear jumped out of the open back and pulled the chain free. He held the gate for the truck, then climbed back into the truck and pulled its rolling door shut. Whistler locked the gate behind it and made his way back to the building.

"Dispatch, Marki." The snow leopard slung her rifle and led the way back to the ladder they'd climbed. "The truck just left our target address. Nowak is still on the ground here."

"Roger."

As soon as they made it back to their car, Nick punched the license plate he'd caught into the system.

"86-LST-15," he read as the computer chewed on the records check. He rubbed his tail between his paws, trying to get the chill out of his pads. "It's a rental, registered to Branburn Industrial."

"We'll follow up."

"I don't want to go in there without backup," Nick said.

"No," Marki agreed. "Send what we have to records. It's enough for a warrant now." She took the radio pawset. "Dispatch, arrange for an entry team."

"Ah, wait one." Dispatch had that harried sound of someone attempting multiple conversations at once.

Their service phones went off, one after the other. Nick grabbed for his.

"Marki, is Wilde with you?" dispatch asked.

"Yes."

"Someone just went after Allan Reed."

Marki started the car. The tires spun for grip. "Is he alive?" she snapped.

"Not a scratch. Officers are responding."

"Get a 20 on his lawyer."

"I'm told he's there, too."

It was all wrong. Nick held on as Marki counter-steered through corners, heading for the expressway. He read the canned incident alert on his phone and his sense of getting played came back, worse than before. Someone wanted them off the scent of whatever was happening at the warehouse.

"This is a feint," Nick said.

"Probably." They were clear of the industrial frontage roads, well out of range of anyone listening for police activity. Marki hit the sirens and accelerated.

"But if they're still loading that truck they don't know we're already watching."

"Tell dispatch. We need eyes on Whistler if we can't be there."

\---

Reed had insisted on staying in his own home, in a polished, fake-looking suburb for small- to mid-scale animals right on the edge of downtown. He had an immaculate lawn and a double garage, and a nice set of jagged holes punched in the front picture window. There were four other cruisers here already. The forensics team was unrolling tape.

Merck, a rhino, met them in the driveway. "Reed hit his own panic button twenty minutes ago," he said, and pointed them through the garage. "Apparently there was a drive-by attempt. Gunfire and a good old-fashioned brick through the window, if you can believe it."

That didn't make sense at all. The sun was coming up; it was the start of rush hour. "Anybody hurt?" Nick asked.

"Just shaken up. Be careful. His lawyer's being a bit of a diva about it."

Nick soured. Of course Baird would be in the thick of this again. "So thoughtful of him to show up now. No other witnesses?"

"We didn't get any other calls. Patrols will call in if they stop anyone suspicious."

"I knew I didn't like this neighborhood."

The house smelled of money and pika, in that order. It was large enough that neither of them had to duck, which was nice. Marki stopped Nick in the living room, while they surveyed the collection of bullet holes in the far wall and the sizable paving stone in the center of the room. There was a yellow evidence flag perched on top.

"Treat this as the scene it is," she said. "Compartmentalize. If they want to talk, let them, but don't spill anything about what we know."

"I take it you've met Baird."

"I've heard enough. Don't let him work you up."

"I won't start anything."

Marki gave him a level look.

Reed was sitting at his kitchen table, nursing a cup of fragrant coffee. Baird sat adjacent. His round ears swiveled as Nick and Marki entered the room.

"Director Reed," Nick greeted them. "And Mr. Baird. Are you all right?"

"I'm not hurt, but I hope you're making progress." Reed sounded shaky. "You can imagine I'm pretty anxious right now."

"An attack like this is unusual," Nick said. Reed flinched. "But we're doing what we can. Can you tell me what you remember?"

"Baird and I were meeting for the morning." Reed pointed to the front of the house. "I'd gone to the living room for some files I left on the table, and the next thing I know the windows smashed in."

"Did you see a vehicle?"

"Someone was shooting at me," he squeaked. "I'm not going to stick my head out."

"What about you, Baird?"

The koala flicked between the police officers. "I was at this table at the time. I haven't moved since."

"Have you been through something like this before? You're awfully calm."

"I make a point of avoiding gunfire, Officer Wilde." Baird frowned. "Make no mistake, that this happened at all is disconcerting. An indictment, even."

"You don't have any leads?" Reed demanded. "I can't go on like this, officer. I sent my family away just last night, to the summer house so they wouldn't have to deal with the stress of police coming and going. What if I hadn't done that?"

"We're making progress," Nick said, winning the fierce internal battle to not roll his eyes. There were lives at stake, he reminded himself. "But like I told you, we had no more warning than you did."

"Do you even know where Nowak is? Would he really try to kill me?"

A brick smelled more like intimidation than a direct murder attempt to Nick. But while Whistler had proved he was capable of trying either, Nick doubted a ferret could have lifted the rock he'd seen in the living room.

Besides, Nick had just watched him climbing the stairs to the front door of the warehouse up in Tundratown, not that Reed or Baird needed to know that. "We're following several leads on locations. He's not working alone, though."

Baird snorted. "At this point I'm inclined to think government custody is a safer option than local police. How long do you intend to string us out on the threat of federal charges? If you're serious about the possibility, perhaps it's better if Director Reed contacted the bureau himself."

"If you have anything you'd like to share to help us along, we can get an affidavit right now, Baird," Nick shot back. "We can't be everywhere at once."

Indeed." Baird's muzzle twisted. "I want a time frame."

"We're not privy to federal investigations until orders are exercised," Marki said, stepping to the rescue. "There's no estimate to give."

"How long until you expect to be making arrests?"

"We can't share that information."

Baird narrowed his eyes, but seemed to accept that. He turned to Nick. "And where is your partner, anyway?"

That took a moment to sink in, and with it came the abrupt reminder that he hadn't heard from Judy in more than 24 hours now. It was the longest they'd been apart since his academy stint. Nick felt the loneliness pulling at him, and with it a slow dread. Baird couldn't have put that together, could he?

"Doing some research into Nowak's activities," he said through his teeth.

"From a hospital bed, I hear. I'm sorry."

Nick had no one to blame but himself, but he made a slow turn to Reed anyway. Someone's claws scratched on the hardwood floors. Reed cringed away from him, eyes wide.

"Wilde." Marki had a paw on his shoulder. "That's out of line, Baird."

"Just putting this in terms Officer Wilde will understand," the koala said, and there was far too much satisfaction in his tone for Nick's liking. "If you can't even protect your own, I worry about your department's abilities to protect my client."

"Are we done here?" Nick ground out.

Baird stared across the table. "Director, I see no alternative but to wait, and trust ZPD to do its job. For that, I'm sorry."

"But-" Reed dithered. "What do I do? What am I supposed to tell my family?"

"I'd advise against contact," Marki said, and stepped back so Nick could stand. She kept her warning paw on his shoulder. "If your family is somewhere safe, they should stay there."


	10. Chapter 10

"Wilde."

Nick stalked down the perfect sidewalk back to their cruiser. Marki had followed him down the road, and any moment now she was going to talk some sense into him, but until then Nick just wanted to chew on this.

Shyster was far too kind. Baird was exploitative slime, pushing buttons he had no right to even know existed.

 _This_ was why Nick needed to keep what he and Judy had quiet: because when it got out, there was always someone waiting to trample it. Torren was still giving them looks across the break room from back during the Boots case. Judy's parents had gone legal. And now Nick's own shortsightedness had given that shifty lawyer ammo he was sure to use.

It had never been this bad when he was on his own. Nick wouldn't change what had happened to him for the world, but Judy held him up. He'd come to depend on her, and this was one of the downsides. There was one thing - one bunny - that got to him now.

Marki put a paw out from behind him and shut the passenger door he'd opened.

"Wilde, you have to dial it back."

"You think Baird's going to?" Nick asked. "You heard-"

"I don't care what Baird did," Marki cut him off. This time there was steel in her tone, and she seemed utterly unimpressed with the aggressive set of his ears. "You are _accountable_ , Wilde. That's the difference." Her eyes flicked through the window, to where the camera crouched on the dash, looking through the windshield. She lowered her voice. "Bogo would string you up if he knew you were showing witnesses your teeth."

Nick shot a look at the dashcam, too, and felt the anger cooling in his chest. Marki was right. "I should never have told Reed."

"Why did you?"

"He's easy to rattle, and we needed a break."

She opened the door for him. "You should assume he's going to tell his lawyer everything."

It was midday by the time they returned to Tundratown, but this part of the city apparently didn't see much traffic other than delivery vehicles moving shipments around. Nick and Marki met several blocks from their target with the surveillance team to get caught back up, and aside from the rest of the SWAT group Nick knew was hiding out in an undercover transport somewhere nearby they were the only ones out here in the cold.

"Nowak is still inside," one of the team said. "And his friends came back. He has at least three others with him. A pig and a grizzly, and we couldn't spot the third. Engine's still cold on their truck. They've stayed here all morning."

Marki turned to the SWAT leader, a polar bear named Fullbright. "The warrant cleared?"

He held up a folded sheet of hardcopy. "Right here."

She took it and read carefully.

No-knock was always risky. They had the clout to secure it this time because Whistler was already a suspect in deadly assault, and because they had probable cause to believe there were explosives on-site. But going straight in the front doors forfeited the one chance - however slim - for everyone to play nice and defuse the situation.

That Nick was going to be the first one in the front door was only part of the anxiety rolling in his gut. He checked his earpiece and dogged the straps on his fresh riot plates a bit tighter.

"One cruiser each on the side streets and one in back," Marki said over the channel. "Sniper team on the roof watching the target truck."

A gray van with utility markings rolled up, and Fullbright pointed. "That's us."

"Go-no go," Marki said. "SWAT."

"Go." Fullbright swung into the van and made room for them.

"Cordon."

"Go."

"Snipers."

"Sharpshooters, go."

Marki looked down at Nick through her impact glasses. "Point."

Nick swallowed and widened his stance to stay balanced as the van started to move. "All set."

"Just like training," Marki said, off the radio. "Keep breathing, Wilde."

There was no perimeter security. They rolled right up, two cruisers in blackout mode bracketing the street at the corners, and the van in front. Nick couldn't even see the sniper team over the roof of the low warehouse, where he and Marki had watched the activity earlier that morning.

The gate didn't squeak, which had to be a first, and six officers in heavy armor hustled through the snow. That part sure sounded like a lot of noise.

But they made it to the steps at the entrance and stacked up. Marki ducked to the opposite side of the door and gripped the handle. It was unlocked, so she left the ram in place on her back and nodded to Nick.

"Three seconds," came her count. "Two."

She pulled on the door and Nick moved, _in and right, in and right, look for targets, stay right and out of the way of the bruiser behind you._

It was clean concrete, a little raised platform with safety railings that stepped down into the warehouse floor. There was open space to the right, brightly lit with clamp-on work lamps, and a tall stack of crates and scaffold to the left that blocked their view of the rest of the interior but was also useful cover.

Nick made it three more steps, listening to the careful paws and hooves behind him, listening for telltales ahead of them, and then a pig came around the corner of the crates and stopped dead.

The whole team, Nick included, yelled at him to get down, but he was just backing up. Two warnings. Three. Nick was closest so he took the shot; good contact, good feed and the pig went down, locked up under the taser. One of SWAT - Morgan, he thought it was under all that armor - was in position, so he dropped the cartridge and let the hippo jump on the perp and zip ties to his wrists.

The rest of the team had fanned out behind them, going deeper into the building. Nick went for cover at the corner of the crates, next to Marki. He could sort maybe two sets of commands out of the noise. Two more perps. SWAT had lost surprise but they had good positioning; maybe it was enough to bottle them up-

The shooting started.

The police sank into what cover they could. It was louder than Nick remembered, and got even louder as those officers who had carried nonlethal switched over.

 _"Runner in the truck,"_ someone yelled over the radio.

_"Take, take-"_

A long gun sounded from outside and Nick heard shattering glass.

_"How many?"_

_"Two plus that driver. Bear and a weasel?"_

_"Ferret."_

_"Pepper on the driver, repeat, pepper."_

_"Come on, come on-"_

Someone out there was reloading. Marki leaned around her cover, carbine up, and squeezed off two shots.

 _"That's it, bear_ down _, good shooting-"_

_"Where's the other one?"_

_"He's hit somewhere, McHorn hit him."_

The silence was deafening. Twenty seconds, two hours; Nick couldn't tell. Marki was motioning him forward. He had the smallest cross section. It made sense for him to move up while they covered him.

It didn't look like a chemical operation at all. Nick saw long steel tables like something out of a restaurant kitchen, holding wide trays of green plants. He got a deep breath of a familiar peaty scent - dirt, the very same dirt he'd seen in the gardening shop downtown - and a sharp, minty tang.

A grow? Nobody shot it out over a grow, not since Bellwether. And that hadn't been catnip.

The bear was indeed down, hit twice that Nick could see and not moving. Blood had started to run to a nearby drain set in the floor.

And on the other side of the tables there was a white ferret, sitting hard against the nearest one, his paws limp in his lap.

Nick barely remembered to call the clear. Three officers charged past him to deal with the armadillo in the truck. Everyone else spread out. Nick crouched alongside a face he'd never seen up close but had memorized anyway, from a couple of too-long nights of staring at the mugshots. The Tundratown chill had nothing on the bone-deep cold that settled in him now.

Whistler was in bad shape. He was still breathing, but it was short and sharp and reeked of blood. He had a red spot high up on the right side of his chest. Nick reached for a pair of gloves.

"Don't touch me, fox," Whistler rasped.

"You're shot," Nick said, and made a point to not meet the ferret's eyes. This was going to be hard enough, working on someone who had gone after Judy.

"Wasn't you. You don't have it in you."

"Shut up." Nick applied pressure. Whistler groaned but made no move to stop him. He probably didn't have the strength; he'd been a wiry pile of bones to begin with.

It felt bad. Not bleed-out bad, but some wounds didn't have to be. The way he was breathing, Nick suspected the bullet might have hit a lung.

"Wilde, you good?"

"He's alive," Nick called to whoever it was. "He shouldn't move, though. This might be serious."

"ZMS is two minutes out."

Whistler coughed a laugh. "He's gonna come after you for this."

"Who's 'he?'"

"He reads you like a book and-" he swallowed. "And plays you when he thinks you're a threat. You really think he's going to ignore this?"

Sure, Whistler probably shouldn't have been talking with a sucking chest wound, but at least he was staying further out of shock this way. For once, Nick wished he had a camera on him.

"Who's coming, Nowak?"

The ferret's breathing flecked blood on the white fur of his chin. "Surprise."

Nick stared at the brushed steel of the table and tried not to take it personally. Whistler probably would have said the same to whoever was sitting here trying to save his life. The ferret was scared and hurt, prone to babbling.

"You've been taking orders this whole time? Following cops?"

"Maybe," Whistler said. "Why do you even bother?"

That shocked Nick into looking at him. He had red-rimmed eyes and even with the pain he had to be feeling there was a sneer twisting his muzzle. Nick willed his hackles still.

"You have a lot to explain, Whistler. I need you alive."

"If I don't die here, he'll just make sure it happens later. There's no point."

"No, there _is_ a point," Nick gritted, feeling the same lonely hopelessness that had ambushed him at Reed's kitchen table. He pressed harder on the entry wound, drawing a hiss from its owner. "Three days ago, you stabbed a cop down at the Boardwalk. I promised her I'd find you."

Whistler stared, and began another terrible choking laugh.

"It's _you,_ " he said. "You're the ones who he wanted out of the way, all the way from the beginning. Oh, it all makes sense now. I'm almost sorry for you."

Nick's stomach turned to ice and he fought the realization that no, it really was personal. Somehow, Whistler knew. Somewhere along the line amid all those months of work and stress and recovery he'd let something slip, shown too much. Now someone had figured out enough of it to get to him. Enough of it to get to Judy.

He shouldn't be listening to this. Not here. It had to wait for official questioning, it wasn't safe to take anything he said now as actionable - and yet he heard himself asking anyway.

"What are you talking about, Whistler?"

"You'll see," he said, baring bloodstained teeth in a crooked leer. He was slipping out of it. "And then you're gonna wish I killed her. You're gonna wish he told me to finish the job."

Nick felt the world threatening to stop under him again. He sank back on his haunches, now totally and entirely too focused on the ferret in front of him. The one someone had shot. The one who would likely die if medical help didn't arrive in time.

The one who had put a knife in Judy's gut.

Nowak's breathing was shallow enough as it was. If Nick eased off his pressure at all, he could feel it hitch and go labored.

Why _did_ he even bother?

The thought came out of nowhere, and with it the the training, the moral imperative, the reflex that no, he couldn't even _think_ this, it wasn't how things were done. But there was no one left to turn to. No other way out. Whistler had seen to that.

And Nick was scared. Coming off action. Applying critical first aid in the field for the second time. Who would blame him for getting it wrong? Who would know what really happened if Whistler died here?

Nick stared, on that awful razor's edge he felt he might fall over, until the EMTs brushed past him. He ignored the confused looks they sent his way.


	11. Chapter 11

The aftermath moved just as fast as the shootout had, in its own way. Nick had watched all of it from the back of the ambulance where the psych team finally left him alone, and now he was staring at the evidence layout again in the debrief room.

They'd found their fertilizer, but instead of making explosives Whistler seemed to be fertilizing dirt. The trays were shallow, and small enough to be moved easily. The evidence team had found more in the truck, which suggested the whole operation was going mobile in a hurry. Catnip seemed a strange thing to make so complex, though. Growers needed licenses, sure, but there wasn't enough overhead in the drug to justify what had happened in Tundratown that afternoon, much less justify almost two million dollars in cash that had gone through Garreline.

It wasn't until they'd moved almost all of it that they found the other trays, the ones already packed in crates in the back of the truck. That changed things.

The various natural amphetamines were all Schedule I, second only to night howlers in terms of restrictions on their use. Whistler and his crew were looking at a long list of felony charges for this. The feds that were sniffing around Reed's case had gotten interested fast.

Now they needed Whistler alive more than ever, and thanks to Nick's moment of bloodlust it wasn't clear he'd make it. The counselor hadn't asked yet about what had happened with the ferret, but now that Nick was out of the moment he couldn't help but weigh the difference between what he had to do and what he wanted to do. It was too blurry now; the motivations for each path both so powerful that he couldn't trust himself to make the right decisions anymore.

"Apart from your taser discharge at the beginning, you didn't participate in the exchange," the elk said, noting something on his clipboard. "We've already made a preliminary review of your gun footage and don't see any discrepancies."

Nick nodded.

"Nowak is in critical condition at the hospital. The surgeons can't say yet if or when he'll recover enough to make statements, but you'll be notified since his progress is tied to your case."

"Zootopia General?"

"Highland, according to the case file. It was closer, and he was in bad shape."

Nick relaxed. "Right."

"The paramedics said you were in mild shock," the counselor went on, and looked at him so closely Nick guessed he was inspecting his pupils more than trying to get his attention. "If you feel stressed or need someone to talk to in the next couple days, give us a call, okay? It's what we're here for."

"I'm fine," he lied. "That was hours ago."

The elk accepted the blunt response with the inclined head and good grace of someone bound by patient confidentiality. "Unless you have anything else to add, we're all done here. You'll be able to pick up all your equipment tomorrow."

Nick could still hear Whistler's shallow breathing. If he wasn't careful about it, it got uncomfortably loud.

He'd told the counselors about the mystery third party Whistler had mentioned, but he'd left out the part about targeting Judy. He couldn't bring himself to share that yet, couldn't talk about it without risking revealing more than was safe. She was protected, for now. The hospital was secure, and Fangmire was still keeping an eye on her, even this time of night.

He left headquarters and looked in the general direction of the hospital on his way down the stairs.

It wasn't enough. Two days now, and it felt like months. He needed to hear her voice. He'd never had to do something like this alone.

But he couldn't risk calling her. Bogo had been explicit, and if he got fired Judy would never forgive him.

Nick tapped speed dial anyway, and six rings later, when he got voicemail, his breath caught in his throat. There was only so much he could burden others with.

"Captain, you can delete this if you want, and you probably should. But if you have no idea what I'm talking about: tell Judy I'm okay. Tell her I miss her, and I'm figuring this out. Tell her to be careful."

It wasn't much. And now that he'd sent it he hoped Fangmire would delete it. Nick expected the tiger would do a lot for him, but asking him to implicate himself in the violation of a restraining order was a step too far.

And yet, when his phone buzzed not a minute later, just before he got on the train to head home, he snatched it.

"Fang, did you-"

"No," a voice said.

Nick frowned. "Sorry, who is this?"

"I don't have much time, so listen closely."

The screen read UNKNOWN. "Listen, this is a private number."

"And you cost me a lot of money today, Officer Wilde. You're going to want to hear what I'm offering you."

Nick stopped dead. "Who is this?" he repeated.

"This afternoon, your SWAT team shut down my little greenhouse in Tundratown. Sad as I am to see that valuable stock go, I don't have the resources for anything as elaborate as revenge. But I will ruin your life without hesitation if you interfere any further."

Nick's hackles shifted. Why had he left the station already? The tech teams had recorders that would have been able to save this conversation, even track where it was coming from. He started back the way he'd come. "You really want to threaten a cop, buddy?"

"Is it really something you want to leave to chance?" the voice asked. "I know where you live. I know where Sergeant Shassa Marki lives. Allan Reed is a shivering wreck of a loose end, scared to leave his own home even if your officers would let him. Greg Nowak is likely to die after a series of difficult surgeries."

Nick snorted, but he didn't feel too disdainful just then. Anyone could bluff. But whoever this was had a lot of uncomfortably accurate information. "And?"

"And Officer Judy Hopps is recovering from a stab wound at Zootopia General."

The ice was back in his stomach. He picked up his pace. "What do you want?"

"I want to be left alone. Drop this case, Officer Wilde, for your own sake. Whistler might be dying, but I have no qualms about finishing what he started if you don't stop snooping around. You'll run out of partner long before I run out of money to buy people off."

Nick _snarled._

The call ended in his ear.

Most of the animals still in earshot were staring now, but Nick ignored them and cast around as if answers might manifest out of thin air.

Bogo's phone rang through. Fang wasn't answering. He didn't have Marki's number. His radio was still in impound. He stared at his screen, and the desperation made him tap Judy's icon. It didn't matter what they did to him anymore. She had to know someone was coming.

He racked his brain. Nobody knew enough about the case to put all this together. Nick could count the non-police that knew about Judy's injury on one paw. Reed was terrified of him; Whistler was in no condition to be talking to anybody; Judy's parents were scared, not psychotic; and that left-

_Baird._

Judy's phone rang and rang. He broke into a run.

\---

Bogo hadn't answered his phone, but he was still in his office when Nick burst through the door. Under normal circumstances his thunderous reaction would have made even Nick think twice about approaching.

_"Wilde-"_

"Judy's in trouble," Nick gasped. "It was Baird. The whole time. He just spilled the whole thing to me. He says he's going to go after her."

Bogo, to Nick's absolute relief, prioritized. He plucked the radio from his desk cradle.

"Fangmire, Bogo here. Status."

"All quiet here, sir. Hopps' parents just left for the night."

"Wilde says someone may be targeting her again. Dig in. We're sending backup to you. And someone to intercept her family before they get too far and bring them to the station."

"Yes, sir."

Bogo started for the door. "The fast version, Wilde. Walk and talk."

Nick recounted as much of the conversation as he could remember, and did a better job than he would have liked. Baird's voice seemed burned into his memory already. He was collecting horrible sounds.

"You didn't trace the call?"

"There was no time."

Bogo stopped at the night dispatch desks and rattled off orders to direct backup to the hospital, then turned to Wilde again. "Give your phone to tech, then. If there's a location to be had, they'll get it. You're sure about this? Reed's own attorney? He gave you his name?"

"No."

Bogo's face darkened. "Wilde-"

"There's no one else," Nick said, before the chief could start. "Everyone else attached to this case is accounted for. He rattled off Reed, Whistler, even Marki. Nobody else knows the names like he does."

"That's not enough for us to move against someone, Wilde. A hunch?"

"What choice do we have?" Nick burst out.

"This office does not - cannot - commit to rash action on the basis of one unverified phone call," Bogo said, and loomed over Nick. "That is how innocent people are hurt or killed."

"You would risk her life for that?" Nick asked. "She doesn't even know what happened to me, much less what's coming for her, and you're _wasting time-"_

_"Enough."_ Bogo pulled Nick over to the wall, to spare the dispatchers. "You still don't seem to get it. I warned you about exactly this. You're too close to this case. It's coloring your judgement, making you jump to conclusions."

Nick happened to share that assessment, but Bogo still didn't seem willing to even play it safe. "Chief, I can't just leave her."

"Don't insult me," Bogo hissed. "You're not the only one here who cares about what happens to Hopps. We will make sure she stays safe, and we will follow up on the allegations you just leveled against a private citizen. But you're done. For your own good. Go give your phone to the tech boys and go home, Wilde. Marki will drive you if you don't want to wait for the next train."

Bogo delivered it so quickly Nick didn't register the meaning at first. The chief had turned and was halfway down the hall before Nick drew breath to respond, and by then it was far too late.


	12. Chapter 12

Marki was, in that preternatural way of hers, right nearby after Nick surrendered his phone. But she hadn't listened in, or was at least good at pretending she hadn't, because when Nick broke the news in the cruiser her flat-eared surprise seemed genuine.

"Explain."

"Baird called me," Nick said. He related the conversation for a third time, and Marki at least seemed more receptive than Bogo had.

"I don't like this," she said.

Some remorse jumped onto the pile Nick was balancing. Marki was about as decent and hard-working a cop as they came, and he'd gotten himself pulled right as she needed his help the most. "I'm sorry, Marki."

"No, I don't like that Baird might make contact. If he's telling the truth, he wouldn't tip his paws until he thought he could get away with it."

"You believe me."

"Enough to play it safe." She braked at the curb at Nick's apartment building and seemed to come to a decision. She opened her door and got out to walk around the front of the cruiser, and watched Nick until he'd shut his door behind him.

"I'm going to the hospital."

"Whistler's probably still in surgery."

"Not Highland." Marki shook her head. "General. To coordinate with Judy." She paused. "If you have a message for her, I'll see that she gets it."

She didn't have to do this. She shouldn't be doing this, with how Bogo was breathing down Nick's neck; with how Baird was gunning for all of them; with how the legal fallout of contacting Judy would suck her in if it ever got out she was helping like this.

And here she was anyway. Nick swallowed. As long as they were breaking all the rules, what was one more?

"Tell her I love her."

Marki's ears sharpened the word. Something like sympathy flicked across her face. "Done."

And as she turned to go, the gratitude and guilt and the quiet part of him that knew he was in the wrong made Nick speak up again.

"Marki, be careful around Baird."

She paused in the headlights at his tone and looked at him.

"He might go after Reed, or Whistler. Whistler might die anyway." She deserved to know, if she was going to do this for him. She needed to know what she was abetting. "I almost stopped aid. In the warehouse. I wanted to see him hurt."

Marki's ears flattened, and Nick bore the shock. He didn't know if a revelation like that was enough to override their little off-record agreement, but Nick didn't have much else to lose at this point.

"I'm going to forget I heard that, for Judy's sake," she said, so quietly Nick barely caught it over the idling engine. She turned back to the cruiser. "Bogo was right to pull you."

It stung, but it stung because she was right and now everyone but Judy had said so. Nick's heart cramped. "Have you never been in love, Marki?"

Her shoulders hunched and her tail cranked tighter, almost imperceptibly.

Nick didn't much like the satisfaction he felt at seeing that hit home, through armor she maintained even more carefully than his. "It makes you do stupid things."

"Lhastha," she said, her eyes fixed forward. "The northeast steppes, during the civil conflict ten years ago. Tamra and I were on PSF close protection detail, minding the state secretary. He was trying for dialogue."

She wasn't supposed to have an answer. The guilt grated against Nick's ribs.

"The airstrike dropped the building on us." Marki turned to him. Her tail lashed, heavy enough to move air currents of its own. "I went for her first, even when she told me not to. Our mark died of blood loss I could have stopped, and Tamra died in my arms anyway."

He couldn't say anything to that, not without sounding trite. Judy was still alive, which was more than Marki could say for... her lover? Yes, it had to be. Marki's expression was a mirror of his own right now.

"We had to keep it quiet, and that made losing her even harder." Marki held her eyes closed for a moment, until her tail went still again. "It took me a long time to let go of the guilt and the desire for revenge. I had hoped you and Judy would never have to go through that."

"Marki."

"The point is, yes, love drives everyone to mistakes," she said, and crouched so she would be on his eye level. "But some of them you can see coming in time, and those are the ones you owe to her to be most careful with. Think of what she would want, Nick. With everything you do."

\---

Parking duty was supposed to be special. Domestic, in its own little way. Nick had never minded it before, because rolling down the streets with Judy was enjoyable, no matter the circumstance. Bogo had even stopped giving it to them as punishment, because they were so bad at disguising their enthusiasm for it. And they still sometimes volunteered, just for the low-stress civic-assistance excuse to spend sanctioned time together.

Now, of course, it was punishment, and it felt like it. The populace was especially _ungrateful_ today, and Nick was only getting through the shift because he had long experience with ignoring angry residents and the veiled insults they tossed to the fox who inconvenienced them. He spent the time thinking of Judy.

Losing access to the Garreline case notes was like one more lifeline cut. Nick had leaned on even that utterly professional paperwork for the glimpses of her presence it offered: her neat handwriting in the margins, the businesslike language she used to complete summaries. Now he couldn't even page through those without risking Bogo's wrath.

Now, relegated to parking duty until the chief _'decided what to do with his sorry tail,'_ Nick had moments of perspective, of realizing how far off the rails he really had gone. The six-block ring around the Zootopia General exclusion zone was now the most thoroughly policed stretch of street infrastructure in the entire city. It would generate half the month's parking ticket revenue.

But it was only noon, and Nick had no choice but to move further afield, where he wouldn't be able to see the medical towers.

He cocked an ear to the radio every time it went off, just in case. What he would do if something happened was less clear. Fangmire and a few others were relieving each other in shifts, it sounded like. Even if Baird showed, even if Judy were in danger, he would only be in the way if he decided to break the court order's restrictions. And she would want him to stay safe, to keep from complicating the situation.

Nick squeezed the little traffic buggy's steering wheel so hard he left claw marks in its rubberized grips.

Judy would trust him to wait, no matter who came for her, no matter what they did. But Nick wasn't strong enough to stay away, if it came to that. Even if it meant tossing away his career and doing damage to hers, he couldn't take that risk, that something terrible might happen to her because he wasn't where he might have prevented it.

Someone laid on their horn and swept around his idling cart. Nick started out of his thoughts and entertained dark new ones of retaliation before his mind caught up with him.

It was all hypothetical. Judy was safe. Bogo had said so - made a promise, in his own way. Marki and Fangmire were with her now. Nick breathed.

_Next ticket. Next ticket._

His teammates did more for him than he deserved. He relied on their good graces, on their willingness to bend rules. It couldn't go on, even if they had seen something in him they felt was worth the risk. Judy would say so about that, too. Their personal lives were theirs to sort out, not something they could burden others with.

His ticket counter read 412 by the time he made it back to the station to roster out. It was quiet, near the end of the day shift. Marki was nowhere to be seen. Nick resisted the urge to call up case notes and instead trusted she would be out doing some good. Clawhauser waved as he left for the train.

Nick shouldn't have returned to his apartment, where the only company would be the noise of his own thoughts and the stress of the evening police radio. But the public had burned him out, and he would rather eat something forgettable, change into a beaten pair of shorts and drift off on Judy's couch than face anyone else tonight. It still smelled of her. This time, through some force of will he didn't know he still possessed, he held it together. She would be back here soon enough. Had to be.

Sleep came eventually, borne more of exhaustion than habit. The radio stayed quiet. Even his freshly imaged phone didn't intrude. The tech team had reset it to its defaults after stripping its memory, so when the screen lit up across the room, displaying a forwarded warrant for the arrest of Anton Baird, Nick didn't wake.

\---

It took someone at his door for that.

The murmur was quiet and brief enough to be incidental; someone passing in the late evening to or from their own unit. But Nick hadn't recognized the baritone. Nobody on his floor was large enough for such a deep voice.

He held still, staring at the ceiling, until it came again, too brief to sort any words from. Nick rolled off the couch as quietly as he could.

Nobody loitered in here, not at midnight. There were keycard locks on the street entrances, and staff in the lobby that were supposed to stop people without business in the building. Whoever was here was here for a reason, and Nick didn't like any of the possibilities. Marki must have made progress.

He scooped up his radio and his taser on the way past, muting the former and charging the latter. The door was rated for fire and brute force resistance, and Nick had installed an extra interior deadbolt himself, down low for Judy, because he was paranoid like that. But the peephole didn't show anything. He fanned an ear to the edge.

"You have a key, don't you?" came the voice from before. Nick racked his brain. It was so familiar. Where had he heard that before?

"It's not enough. He's got extra locks, he's weird-"

 _That one_ he knew by heart.

He dropped his tools and threw both locks and she was there, standing _right there_ in the bright light of the hallway, wearing loose clothing that looked a few days old, frail and drawn - dead on her footpaws - but smiling like she hadn't seen him in years. Her shoulders hitched and a little noise escaped.

Nick sank to his knees right where he was and wrapped his arms around Judy as completely as he could. She moaned against his throat, in pain or relief or love or something. Her claws pricked his shoulders. She was shaking.

"You came," he whispered. "Why did you come?"

"Nick, I had to."

Nick looked up. Fangmire was leaning against the wall next to the door, eyes carefully leveled at the weird framed painting on the other side of the hallway.

"I don't see anyone else here, Hopps," he said, fighting the grin. "Get whatever critical personal effects you said you needed and let's go before Wilde shows up. I give it fifteen minutes, if we're lucky."

"Fang."

He glanced down and winked. "Fourteen fifty-nine. Fifty-eight."

The door snapped shut, and his world was her scent and her soft muzzle and the paws she had against his neck.


	13. Chapter 13

Nick couldn't stop apologizing. What for, he wasn't sure. Her parents. Baird. His enforced silence. All of it.

He'd carried her to his bed in the dark, loath to let her go even for something he knew she'd want to do herself. But it was okay, because Judy was holding onto him like he might escape, too, unconcerned with everything but keeping herself close to him and kissing him and nuzzling him as frantically as he did her.

"Nick, we'll fix it."

She smelled of hospital and sterile medical dressings, but she smelled of Judy more. He pushed his muzzle under her chin and moved onto item two. "You're reckless. Your parents could have me arrested for like six different things right now."

"Don't care. They had to go home. I had to wait three days to do this."

"There's a _cop_ outside, Judy, an actual cop, not like us two fuckups-"

"Don't _care._ "

He gave over to the urge and brought delicate incisors together on the base of one of her ears, because he knew it would sharpen her scent even more, and he wanted all of it.

Sure enough, her breath hissed in pleasure. "Seven."

"It's not safe for you to be here."

She had her fingers so deep in the fur of his chest it hurt. " _Still_ don't care. You're not exactly in the clear yourself."

Nick hadn't been stabbed, though. He looked down at her, at the way she was curled in the arc of his body. She met his eyes.

He slipped a paw underneath her shirt with infinite care, over the hot fur of her stomach to where he felt a smooth-shaven patch of bare skin and the rough edge of an adhesive dressing. Judy winced at the contact, and Nick backed off.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm just sensitive."

No, it wasn't okay. She was hurt, weak from stress and surgery and an attempt on her life, and Nick was convinced that was somehow on him. His paw covered her injury again, as if he might speed her healing through his touch.

"Judy, I can't stop this." That was it, he realized. That was why he had to apologize again and again. Nothing he did now would guarantee her safety, or his. He couldn't mitigate the risks, couldn't stop everyone, no matter how hard he tried. "You're back, but you can't be here, I can't keep you safe enough-"

The tears burned, sharp and unexpected. He traded the words for holding his rabbit as tight as he dared, and it still wasn't close enough to satisfy the urge to protect her, to insulate her from the world. He felt his claws in her, harder than he should have them, but she just shivered and pressed herself closer and let him cry.

"Marki told me about Baird," she said.

That twisted in him, because the irrational part of his brain had wanted to hide that stress from her. Even with everything they'd gone through, no one had wanted to kill them before. To hear it from her made it that much more real, made it that much harder to stay between her and everything that threatened their bond.

"Not here," he whispered. _"Please,_ love. Don't do this to yourself."

"We don't have time," Judy said. "Nick, you know I can handle this. Listen. I've been working."

He didn't want her to have to handle anything, to have to work at all. He wanted her to sleep for a week, somewhere he could watch over her, where nobody else knew where they were. But her tone stayed his protest. She was right, so he kept clinging to her and let her talk.

"He's gone again, just like you told me about last time. Right off the map. But tech got enough of a location out of your phone to convince Bogo it was the real deal. So I looked at flights and trains out of the city, but it's too much even for the whole department to sort through."

"We'll have to guess."

"That's the thing. I think he slipped up. And he might not know it, because why would he call you if he thought we could do anything about it?" Judy pushed her chin against him, so her head tilted up toward his. Even as tired as she looked, her eyes were as bright as ever. "Marki and I talked the chief into getting a wiretap warrant, just in case. Baird got a bunch of calls yesterday. At his work number."

Busy little bunny. Even three days off surgery, Judy could still move faster than him. Nick felt the glow of pride, and more than a little infectious enthusiasm for the hunt. "Okay."

"He wasn't there to answer them, of course, because he's doing his hiding thing, but they all came from a residence in Sarona Tower, right below the helipad."

Nick blinked. "That's bigwig territory."

"City Councilman Gabriel Dourant, to be specific." Judy was smiling now. "Now, he's not going to be calling Baird eight times in six hours for no reason. Baird's with a law practice, right?"

"Right."

"We think he faked that whole thing now. He doesn't have a bar number. Marki went to the office in case it was some fluke, and they say they've never heard of him. But on paper, where nobody ever checks in person? He deals with corporate law and commercial holdings, like warehouses."

Nick felt his ears drop. "No."

"Yes." Judy's grin widened. "It's all right there in the paperwork, Nick. Two days ago I prepared a no-knock warrant for a warehouse in Tundratown, leased to Gabriel Dourant, and the real estate arm of Baird's so-called firm set up that lease in the first place."

Nick kissed the top of Judy's muzzle. "You should have been a state prosecutor, Carrots."

"I blame the bedrest." Judy flushed at his praise. "I had nothing else I could do."

"And all I did yesterday was give out parking tickets. Does Marki know?"

She was helping me all day," Judy said. "She's keeping an eye on charter flights right now, I think."

It was a stretch, but the chance to head Baird off as he ran was better than shooting in the dark. In the space of three minutes, Nick was feeling a lot more in control of things than he had for days. And he hadn't even had to do anything. He kissed Judy properly this time.

"I love you."

"Oh, I know."

"Remind Marki to thank Dourant for me after she cuffs him tomorrow."

"Do it yourself."

"I can't." Nick frowned at her. "Unless Marki didn't tell you that part. Bogo pulled me off the case. Parking tickets, remember?"

She did twitch in his arms, but whatever shock or dismay she felt seemed to be residual. "We convinced him Baird was the problem, though. You saw the warrants."

"Warrants, plural? I'm taking your word on the wiretap one as it is."

Judy rolled her eyes. "Point is, I'm going to get him to un-pull you. He listens to me. And Marki will back me up."

She was so fierce, so _right,_ and he loved her so much for that conviction and confidence. But there was one part of the puzzle she was still missing, because Marki had kept her word. It didn't change that he needed to tell Judy, too, to deal with this properly. The way they broke the rules, they had no choice but to share stresses. Miscommunication was doubly dangerous for them.

And he didn't know how she was going to take this. Everything they'd done, they'd done together. Things would have gone very differently in the warehouse had she been at his side.

"I don't know if he should give this back," he said. "I was ready to let Whistler die, Judy. During the raid. He was suffocating and I was going to watch him go, because I thought it might fix something."

Her eyes were wide, but her head ticked back and forth. "You didn't, though."

"But I would have." His claws tightened, helplessly. "I think Bogo is right, even if it is Baird. Especially if it is Baird. I'm too close."

"Nick, I know you."

She knew what he was when this started. But Nick felt changed, subtly and fundamentally at the same time. Whistler was probably still dying. Reed was probably going to end up dead because he was a liability, and Baird had already tried to have Judy killed once. Her being here in his arms gave him an equilibrium he needed, but when he didn't have that he could become as desperate and bloodthirsty as any of them, because he was so scared he might never get her back.

"I don't trust myself to do it right," he said. "Marki has tried to get me to see it. And Bogo. It's taken too much to get through to me already." He held his nose against her ears, where it fit so perfectly. "It's _you,_ Carrots. I can't lose you, and when I think I might, I start to get lost, too."

Judy absorbed that in a silence he didn't deserve. She moved carefully up in the bed, favoring her injured midsection, until she could hold his cheeks in her paws and rest her muzzle over the top of his.

"I trust you," she said. "Maybe that's enough, maybe it's not. But I want you to finish this. I want you to see it through, so you can come back."

He put his careful paw back on her stomach and she gave a shaky sigh.

"Nick, I'm going to fix what my parents did." Judy squeezed her own fingers into his fur again. "They're scared, because it's so new. So different. I was always the one in the family to try things no one else had."

"I should have stayed."

"It's not worth jail time."

"Yes you are."

"And you have a case to crack from the field," she said, and buried her nose against his chest ruff so he wouldn't see her smile. "I did your paperwork. So you do the legwork, and I'll sort out my parents, and then we can rest."

She was so fragile. So tired. Judy had pushed herself these last days because that was what she did, even when it was the most dangerous, the most reckless decision she could make. And now he owed her everything, again, because she'd held off rest she desperately needed to sort this out while he had panicked and paced in circles at the train station and gotten himself thrown off the case and nearly come unglued and killed someone.

"It's been hard, Nick," she said into his thoughts. Her voice caught. "Not knowing you were okay, not knowing where you were, or if you could sleep."

Nick could almost hear his claws tearing into her couch, the night he'd sat there alone, trying to hold it together for her, because he knew the nightmares were just as fierce for her.

_"Carrots."_

Judy squeezed her eyes shut. "Every night since you had to leave," she whispered. "That's my confession. Now we're even."

There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do to fix that. He could keep her here under his chin for the rest of time and the guilt over not being there when she needed his help would still burn him up.

They held each other, and Nick had something new to apologize for again and again, until their time ran out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Judy ex machina.


	14. Chapter 14

They'd pushed their muzzles all over for as long as they dared as Fangmire tapped on the door. Nick had slept better. Not peacefully, not as contentedly as he knew he could, but catching a reminder of her with every breath had been enough to calm him down and help him rest. The footsteps had woken him only once.

And in the morning, he rebelled and skipped the scrub-up, and went to work with her scent still chasing him.

If Bogo or Marki noticed, they weren't saying anything. The chief was seated at his desk; she was standing beside it, between them, her arms crossed over her chest so she could watch Nick carefully.

"The only reason I'm agreeing to this," Bogo rumbled, "Is because I don't think Hopps would listen to me and stay off her feet if I didn't bring you back on. She's done a lot of work on this, against my better judgement, and she seems to think you need to see it through. So." He stood. "I'm going to skip the rest of my dire warnings."

"Yes, sir." Nick slipped off the chair. "My head's back on straight. I know what needs doing."

"We don't," Bogo corrected him. "We're guessing. But it's a better guess than anything else we'll have." He looked at Marki.

"Sarona tower has a helipad," she said. "ATC records say there's one charter flight scheduled for tonight, rush."

"SWAT is going to stage there," Bogo said. He held his door for them. "The pad itself is municipal property, and we don't need a warrant to wait for someone to come to us. If Baird is running that way, he'll have no choice but to go straight through you."

"It's a good plan, boss."

"It's Marki's plan," Bogo corrected him again. "Don't let her down. And come back from it, please. You and Hopps and I need to have a long, careful talk sooner than later."

Nick swallowed. "Yes, sir."

\---

They had time. More time than Nick would have liked, enough for him to sit in the sunset shade of the wind baffles at the top of Sarona Tower and stew.

Everything they'd done - everything Judy had done for him - was still based in some part on assumption. They were set up here, ready to hit whoever came through those rooftop lobby doors about as hard as they could, but Nick wouldn't be able to relax until he saw it happen himself.

Baird - if it was Baird, the part of him that had sat in Bogo's office that morning reminded him - might not even come. He might already know SWAT was planning an intercept. He seemed to know more than he should as it was. What if he forced the issue? Went after Judy to try to bargain his way out?

That was the paranoia talking, though. Judy was about as safe as she could get right now, working a partial shift from HQ under the watchful eyes of Fangmire and Bogo and just about everyone else at the precinct. It was better than Nick could do right now.

But Baird had walked in those front doors once before. Even with everyone watching for him now, he didn't have to get far.

Marki and the SWAT commander Fullbright saved Nick from any more pointless agonizing as they returned from their circuit of the raised landing pad.

"We'll come in behind anyone who comes up the elevators," the polar bear said. "Someone's standing by to cut power, and we have eyes in the tower security room. We'll be able to watch him all the way up."

"Dourant's office is on the 28th floor," Marki said. "If he stops there, leave him alone. We'll deal with the councilman later."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Fullbright lumbered off. Marki looked down at Nick. Her nostrils flared, and she spared an ear for the SWAT commander's retreating back.

"Are you ready?"

"As I'm going to be."

They were alone out here now, but she lowered her voice anyway. "You're taking risks, Wilde."

"She came to me," Nick said. Marki might not have actually known until just now, come to think of it, but at this point he didn't care about what anyone else might pick up from his little tryst last night. "And she's the one who broke this open. I know what's at stake."

Her eyes tightened. "Then set up."

He and Marki would wait here, hidden behind the giant slanted windscreens that sheltered the helipad, until the chartered flight arrived to take Baird - or whoever - away. Their job was to distract him and whoever he had with him long enough for SWAT to get close enough to surprise them.

The thing was, Marki was best suited to fight at a distance, from somewhere where anyone she shot at wouldn't be able to pin her down. It meant Nick would at least appear to be alone. He trusted her accuracy, but he also didn't trust Baird to just stand there and talk with the police officer he'd just threatened over the phone. He wasn't stupid.

Nick just had to hope they could spring this quick and clean enough.

_"Surveillance."_

_"Go."_

_"SWAT."_

_"SWAT set."_

The sun dropped and the wind picked up, and within ten minutes the radio lit up with their first sighting.

_"Got a towncar at the main entrance,"_ the report came from the network room. _"Lots of security suits. Looks like wolf-wolf-rhino-polar bear. There's a koala with them. Definitely giving the orders."_

Nick clamped down on the absurd, vindictive hope, the anticipation of confrontation. None of them could afford him taking this personally. He couldn't assume until he saw him with his own eyes.

The group rode the elevator to the 28th floor, and spent ten minutes locked in an office without any cameras. Two of Baird's detail stayed outside and watched the hallway. He was spooked, it seemed.

Nick caught an aircraft on the wind. Landing lights on the tower pad sparked to life, to guide in a sleek black helicopter, unmarked but for the registration number on the engine cowling. It was loud, and even on the lee side of the wind baffle, the rotors were pushing his exposed fur around. He should have brought glasses like Marki's.

_"He's out,"_ their camera-watcher said in Nick's earpiece. _"Elevator is... bound for the roof."_

_"Return fire,"_ Marki told Fullbright. _"Give them their chance."_ She dropped off the radio and Nick sensed her move closer so he'd be able to hear her over the idling helicopter.

"Just keep him talking. If they shoot, hit the deck."

"Right."

_"Ten seconds,"_ came the call.

Nick had just a crack to watch through, but it was enough to see the elevator doors open for a troop of big animals in suits. Between them came a koala, wearing the same suit Nick had seen him with during that first encounter down in the evidence rooms.

Baird looked to the helicopter, and Nick's teeth went on edge and his tail fluffed. He swore he could feel the cold coming off of him from here.

Time to end this.

They pushed through the glass atrium doors and out into the wind. Nick gave them half the walkway, until they'd be closer to him than the doors. He could see Marki's silhouette to his left, rifle up, waiting.

_"Baird!"_

Nick moved out from behind his shelter, so he was on an angle from them, and took a step forward.

Baird froze, at least, and Nick had the satisfaction of seeing the shock flick across his face. In the corner of his eye, he saw black-uniformed figures crossing the lobby.

"You're surrounded, Baird. All of you, get on your knees and you can still walk away from this."

"It seems I underestimated you, Officer Wilde," Baird said. He pointed, and the guards closest to Nick put paws in their jackets. "I would have expected this from your partner, but not from you. Lesson learned."

The fury tensed Nick to spring, for all the good it would do.

"On your _knees,_ Baird. Last warning."

Behind them, SWAT made the doors and started yelling.

Someone had time for one shot. Nick dove. SWAT opened up with stun rounds and Marki put two into the wolf nearest Nick, a rubber bullet that staggered him and sent his aim wide and a second lethal round that put him on the ground.

Another suit was sprawled at an awkward angle, and then the other two joined him, blindsided by SWAT's entrance and out of the fight.

But Baird was gone, sprinting as fast as his short legs could carry him for the edge of the roof. Nick got his feet under him and followed. He wouldn't jump; there were nets-

And there was a fire escape, or a service stairway to the lower levels or something. Baird took the first flight in one leap. Nick was right behind him, and even with riot plates he landed lighter, moved faster. Baird might be arboreal and dexterous, but Nick was bigger. Stronger and faster. Much, _much_ angrier.

Was Baird carrying? It didn't matter; that's what the armor was for. And Nick was gaining.

Two levels, then three, and the walkway opened up onto a service roof with loose rocks for a floor. Baird's footing was bad, and that gate at the end was locked. He spent one useless moment at its latch, then whipped around and drew a silvery handgun.

To Baird's credit, it was on target. Nick felt something kick him in the stomach plate, driving the wind out of him, but then he was bulling into Baird's face, knocking the gun free, smashing a padded knee into the shorter mammal's snout hard enough to stun him and knock him back against the chainlink.

Nick crouched in front of the koala and put a forearm across his throat, holding him in place. There was blood on his muzzle, with an unfamiliar tang.

Nick dug at his belt. Where were his cuffs? He had to finish this, before it got any worse, before-

"I knew I should have had her killed properly," Baird hissed.

The world went red.

Nick's feet dug in the gravel for traction. He snapped and snarled, showing Baird every one of his teeth, close enough that his breath ruffled the fur on his face.

Even here, cornered, Baird was ready to use Judy as leverage. Nick bore down on his neck until he could feel Baird struggling to drag air into his lungs. He clipped one half of a set of cuffs around Baird's faltering wrist, locked him to the fence and dumped him in a pile.

The koala gasped for breath and the blood pattered on the rooftop stones, but he still looked up when Nick ejected the dart cartridge from his taser and clicked it over to drive mode. The bare arc crackled and flickered, reflecting in Baird's eyes, and Nick finally, _finally_ smelled fear over the blood.

_"Coward."_

Nick didn't feel like a coward. He felt like he was in full control for the first time in days, standing tall with the root cause of all his problems literally helpless and bleeding in front of him. Judy could have died because of him. Her parents wouldn't have overreacted without his influence. Bogo wouldn't have given Nick ultimatum after ultimatum.

Now he had his chance to mitigate some of that pain, to show this waste of air who he was dealing with, what he brought on himself.

Now he had another chance to watch an animal start to die and hope they _felt_ it.

The taser chattered, Baird knelt there and breathed, and Nick couldn't close the distance.

Not with the voice in his head.

_I trust you,_ Judy had said.

_Maybe that's enough, maybe it's not._

The things Nick did defined him, and he had to step away from this precipice, because for once in his life it wasn't just about him anymore. He couldn't rise to the bait from a desperate criminal, raw and private as it was. All Baird had left to lose now was his life, and taking that would make Nick no better than him.

It wasn't his place to decide what Baird got. Stopping him had to be enough. For her sake.

 

For her sake.

 

Nick lowered the taser and shut it off.

Baird stared, as if he didn't understand, and his eyes flicked past him.

Nick turned. Marki stood watching them, and the alarm and tension in her expression was cooling to relief. She nodded at him.

"I'll take it from here, Wilde."


	15. Chapter 15

This part was all too familiar.

Nick wandered the surreal spotlit rooftop, back to where SWAT was securing its scene. The bodies were gone; the surviving suspects hauled away. A team from evidence was interviewing the wide-eyed camel chopper pilot. Nobody paid Nick any mind.

He made his way inside and pressed the call button before he remembered they'd cut the power. How long would this one take to really hit him? When Boots had died, they'd made it all the way to the hospital, almost all the way home before the feeling of over ambushed them. Nick wouldn't have anyone to lean on this time.

"Sarona Tower, huh?"

Nick turned. Fangmire was leaning against the open stairwell door, looking at him as if checking for damage.

"Makes Fallside look pretty pedestrian. You gunning for City Hall next?"

"Don't joke about that," Nick said, and followed him down the stairs. "It's a little too plausible right now. Why are you here?"

"Just passing on a message now that you're done. Hopps says good work." Fangmire checked a hallway as they passed, in case anyone was nearby. "Says she loves you, too."

For the first time in hours, Nick's fur shifted for the right reasons. She'd gotten his message. He gained fresh appreciation for what their co-workers - their friends - were doing. "That means a lot. Thank you."

"Baird got evaced, and Marki went with him to make sure he gets patched up," Fangmire said. "Normally you'd give her your debrief, but since she was on this one too and I'm in the neighborhood I'll handle it."

They sat in a lobby a few floors down, against a set of windows that looked out over the nightscape. Fangmire fiddled with a recorder and handed him a clipboard with the standard statement prompts on it.

"Tell me everything you remember from the start of tonight's engagement," he said.

Nick let the city lights defocus. He took a deep breath, and thought of Judy.

\---

"Baird's not talking yet," Bogo said. "Except to complain about how much you roughed him up."

They were in his office, two days on, just him and Nick for now.

"You shouldn't let me do it," Nick said. "Even if he does want to sign something."

"No," Bogo said. "You're staying as far away from him as I can keep you. You were frank in your incident report, which I appreciate, but some things I just have to address, Wilde."

Honesty was the best policy, if not the most comfortable one. Judy had told him that once, and Nick had made his peace with the fact that his interactions with Baird would be an indictment. He needed to start clean before he saw her again, whatever context that might be in.

"The paramedics found bruising on Baird's neck," Bogo said, and tapped a finger on the folder on his desk. "And atavism for intimidation is a fireable offense if it's ever recorded."

"It is."

"Your gun camera footage was inconclusive, so I cannot immediately fire you."

"That's-" What was Bogo getting at? "A relief, Boss. I like having a job."

"Baird still might sue," Bog said. "And with an allegation like that, I can and will put you on indefinite probation, which I have to say is unprecedented for such a new officer."

 _Ah._ It stung, but Bogo didn't have much of a choice. Nick swallowed. "Yes, sir."

Bogo gave up his staring routine and walked around the desk. "You are unorthodox and, quite frankly, dangerous. I'm starting to wonder if Remedial had any effect on you. I'm not supposed to be adding permanent excessive force notes to your record after a stint there."

"No, sir."

"Stop that," Bogo said. "Your transcripts show you didn't threaten Baird until after you disarmed him. Why?"

"You know why."

Bogo snorted in warning and waved an arm at the walls. "This bit is off the record, too, in case you haven't noticed. You need to tell me why you're such a risk to this organization, so I know you understand."

Nick's hackles shifted. Bogo might have professional interest - professional need to know - but Nick didn't want to talk about this with him while it was so raw. "Baird threatened Judy. Whistler tried to kill her on his orders and got closer than anyone should have, as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to step between that, Chief. Even when the rules say I can't."

_"Say it."_

_Damn him._ Nick's chin came up and his teeth went on edge. "I'm in love."

"You are. It's none of my business - until you make it my business." Bogo lowered his own horns a fraction at Nick's flat-eared reaction. _"Listen to me,_ Wilde. You're out of rope. You might have done what you felt you had to, but you've burned your half of the one shot on this one, and a good portion of your partner's."

"So boot me," Nick growled.

"If it were up to just me, I might have," Bogo said. He looked at the door. His jaw worked. "But Marki vouched for you on the rooftop, and if I do fire you Hopps is likely to follow, since you've replaced policing atop her list of favorite things."

Nick would have to talk to her about that. He knew it was probably true, but he'd made enough rash decisions for the both of them, for a long while.

That was why this whole dressing-down paled, compared to what he would have to do with her. She might be willing to look past what he'd done in the warehouse with Whistler, but she'd be reading this report as soon as Bogo released it. Nick hoped she didn't let her concern for him get in the way of what she saw again. He couldn't let her forgive him this. Bogo was right: some things had to be addressed.

"We're pulling both of you out of the aftermath," Bogo said into his thoughts. "It's all slotting into place anyway, even without Baird's help." He returned to his side of the desk to don his glasses and look at the report. "Whistler got cooperative after the doctors pulled him through. His affidavit confirms he was a willing participant in the bank activity that started this. Says he has evidence Baird was using the accounts to move Boots' payments around. He even pointed us toward a couple of other gangs we think Baird was paying to do some of his dirty work."

"He was fall muscle. He doesn't have the big picture."

"Probably not," Bogo agreed. "Every little bit will help against someone like Baird, though. The DA seemed optimistic when I met with her yesterday."

"And Dourant? The Councilman?"

"He swears up and down, on-record, he had no idea he was leasing someone space for illegal narcotics operations. It might be true, for all we know. Baird seems to like paying people who will look the other way, or won't look closely at all. Reed comes to mind."

Nick fidgeted. "When does Judy start full-shift work again?"

"I haven't decided," Bogo said. "And I don't like that she was working with a gut wound this whole time, important case or not. I'm going to make her take a break. A week, at least."

"Thank you."

"You and I both know she'll ignore it," Bogo said. "Do us all a favor and try to sort out whatever's fouled up your personal life. I want a normal workplace environment back."

Bogo didn't know about the night before Sarona. Good old Fangmire. "Not up to me, Boss."

The chief raised an eyebrow, and Nick wondered if he could be certain about that last thought after all.

"Of course. I'd switch you two up, you know. But I think you're the only ones who won't drive each other insane."

"Probably."

"You get a week, too. Sometime in the next month. When you two come back, we're taking you off the hard cases for a while."

Nick prided himself on his ability to read people, but Bogo was still one of the few exceptions. Smacking Wilde Back Into Line was apparently complete, replaced with something more protective and careful just below the surface. He decided not to look too closely. "That's generous of you, Chief."

"You both earned it, in your own way. Now that this is really over," Bogo said. "You can stop downstairs, if you need incident counseling-"

Nick got off the chair. "I'll be fine."

"You too, hm?"

Judy would do that. They were each the entirety of the other's counseling. Everything Nick had said for the report, for Bogo; he'd go through again with her. He'd listen to her do the same. It was probably less than medically sound, but Nick preferred the promise of being in her arms to anything he might struggle through with an actual therapist. Maybe in time. Once they'd had the chance to recover together.

He wandered down the quiet main stairs and took time to appreciate just how quickly things could turn around again. Just one death from the helipad shootout, it turned out, which was better than any of them had expected it to go. Nobody was fired. Most importantly, nobody was going after Judy anymore.

But Bogo was wrong. It wasn't over, not really. It wouldn't be until they were back where they belonged. Baird's arrest was supposed to end it, but this had started a long time before they knew the koala was behind anything. They'd agreed to it together, at their desk down here in the staff offices when the first bankers had turned up dead. That's how they needed to end it.

But the only other person down here this time of night was Marki, standing with her arms across her chest by his cubicle like she was waiting for him. She probably was.

"You do have your own housing, right?" Nick asked. "Or have you just been living in the break room?"

The corner of her muzzle lifted, which was still more reaction than anyone else was going to get out of her.

"I live close by."

Nick checked over the stacks of papers and decided he could leave the rest of it for tomorrow. "How's Baird?"

"Uncooperative."

"At least we can hold onto him until he changes his mind," Nick said. "I'm glad he's the feds' problem now."

She was watching him when he turned around. "Will you be all right?"

"Everyone keeps asking that," Nick said.

She raised an eyebrow, and Nick felt a strange warmth in his ears he usually didn't associate with anyone but Judy. It was almost uncomfortable, realizing there was someone else now who looked out for him. Who wanted to make sure he actually was okay, past the requirements the job and the profession mandated.

He'd told Marki things she wasn't supposed to know. Forced her to confront secrets she was under no obligation to actually keep secret. And she did anyway. She listened, and helped, and sometimes spared him more words than anyone heard out of her in two months. If anyone deserved a straight answer, it was her.

"Judy told me she trusted me," he said. "It was enough, when it came down to it and I had Baird on the fence. But I won't be able to let this go until I get her back."

They left the quiet office and crossed the lobby. Nick heard Marki take a deep breath as they stepped into the evening air. He tried one himself.

"You did your part," she said. "She'll do hers."

Judy had said that. Nick looked up.

"She told me she believed in you." Marki kept her eyes front, to watch the fading evening traffic out on the square. "You should make sure she knows she was right."

His throat threatened to close. He stepped after her as she started down the stairs. "Thank you, Marki. For everything."

If either of you ever need advice, or just an ear-" She turned and inclined her muzzle. "Come find me."

\---

It was as good as he was going to get tonight.

His apartment felt quiet and comfortable, even after the last few nights of panic, sadness and precious short elation. Now, with debrief behind him, he was just exhausted. He could catch Judy's scent on his sheets again, and she was finally safe. For now that was enough.

He didn't bother changing, just stretched out on the bed and took her in as best he could.

And for the first time in a week, instead of heavy footfalls or labored breathing, Nick dreamed of Judy standing at his threshold, with a vacated court order in her paws.


	16. Chapter 16

This time, his phone did wake him, because the first thing he'd changed about it was the custom tone for Judy's calls. He sat bolt upright in bed and fumbled for it.

_"Carrots."_

"It's done. Gone."

The relief crested, so severe that some of it escaped as wordless noise. Nick felt his fur standing on end.

"Where are you?"

"Courthouse."

"Okay." Nick swapped the rumpled uniform for the nearest clean grey shirt he could find and ran the angles in his head. Judy's apartment wasn't on a straight line between here and the city hall complex downtown, but it was closer. She'd get to privacy faster if they met there. "Okay. Go home. I'll see you there."

Her own relieved laughter dragged at him. He never wanted to wait this long to hear it again. "Don't break in this time."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said. "I love you."

"I love you. I'll see you soon."

She would. She would see him soon. This was so close to _over_ and they would be back where they belonged. Nick had to remember to slow down and lock his door behind him.

\---

It was just as well the residents at the Grand Pangolin who actually mattered were already used to seeing Nick drop by on a regular basis. He did what he could to keep it quiet and unobtrusive, for Judy's sake, but this time he had no choice but to stand and wait in the morning hallway.

"Nick! How've you been?"

Nick smiled at the familiar face coming from the stairs. "Hi, Bucky. Been busy."

The kudu had a bag of groceries. "I think Judy's out running errands already. Want some coffee or something while you wait?"

"I'm fine. Thanks, though."

"Cool." Bucky hesitated by his door and fumbled with his keys. "Listen, this is maybe none of my business, but are you two doing okay?"

Nick looked up at him, but the alarm and concern at the intimately familiar language was already fading. Bucky and Pronk lived literally next door to Judy, and the walls were thin enough that they caught a lot of whatever happened, like it or not. It had made for some awkward first encounters - but then, the two of them were nothing if not sympathetic to unorthodox relationships. They'd always been supportive, in their own quiet way.

"Haven't seen you in a while," Bucky said. "And, well. We hear she misses you. She worries about you to us. There's not much we can do but make understanding noises."

That was very Judy, too. Nick got another dose of perspective. Their own little world might be the most important thing in their lives, but other mammals were getting drawn in, bit by bit.

"The careers we chose are incredibly stressful sometimes." Nick left it there. "The work means she and I haven't been able to see each other for a while."

"She won't slow down for long."

He was talking about her injury. "No, she won't. Not even when I try to get her to."

Bucky grinned. "You want us to disappear for a while?"

Nick felt his ears heat up. "No, I'm going to try to get her to sleep. No slowing down, remember?"

There was a rhythmic tapping from the stairs. Nick turned.

 _No slowing down,_ indeed.

No crutches or cane for Judy Hopps. Not when ZPD had a whole range of collapsible batons on paw that worked just as well. She was holding herself more or less upright against one that was probably designed for tigers or bears at least.

"Nick."

Nick was barely aware of Bucky's graceful exit behind them, and he wouldn't know or care if anyone else up here was paying attention right now, either. Right now the most important thing was crossing to her and pulling her close, as tight as he could, so she could never escape again.

\---

Judy really didn't have any intention of sleeping. Nick had given up in short order, too. They sprawled on his couch, somewhere between upright and horizontal, and just held on. The thought echoed in Nick's head, over and over until he had to say it aloud, to know it had existed, that they'd passed it.

"It's over."

Judy flinched in his arms and pressed herself closer. "Almost."

He looked down at her, at her desperate grip and the way she was staring at him with a hot little spark in her eyes, like she still had something to prove. Something stirred in him, something wonderful he hadn't considered but was ready to roll with all the same. "Carrots-"

"I have to go back. I have to talk to them in person. It's the only way to see this done."

Oh. _Oh._ This bunny could still yank him around hard enough to give him whiplash sometimes. He pulled her close again, to mask his dismay. "Not what I thought you were going to say, to be honest."

"Nick, I have to." She pushed against him to maintain eye contact, and now she did look sad and a bit desperate. "I can't let this go. Not after everything you did. My parents need to see it."

"Carrots, I just got you back." He pulled her down, gently, to wrap her up against the back of the couch, a cage of fox and concern and love.

"I know." Her voice was rough. "I know, and I'm sorry. But this is my part. You know that. I won't be done until I can have you back and know nobody else is trying to stop it."

Nick nearly whined in helpless frustration and kissed her ears and held her close, but he couldn't fight it. Not when she was right and they both knew it.

In spite of his best efforts to protect her, this sort of thing got out. Sometimes there was no helping that, with the choices and mistakes they made. And she - they - had to address how her parents had reacted sooner than later, for the sake of their bond.

"Not today," he said anyway, in defiance of what he already knew the answer to.

"I already bought a ticket, Nick. The train leaves in two hours."

She was so _moral._ So straightforward. So much better than him at seeing what needed doing and sorting it out in the most efficient way possible, even when it took personal sacrifice and no small measure of pain to do it. Nick didn't deserve her sometimes.

But no, he thought as he kissed her as fiercely as he could, again and again, to make up for all the time they'd lost and would lose. She felt that sacrifice, too. This was her half of the fight. It was still going, even after he'd forced his way through the last of the case's confrontations. He owed her all the support he could muster.

"Then I'm going to follow you. As soon as you say I can."

Judy squirmed against him. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

Eventually, they had to get up, because not even his couch could stop time. Nick hovered, and helped her pack a suitcase with clothes and sundries, and occasionally pulled her around to kiss her and nuzzle her ears and even slide paws under her shirt, because she was about to slip away again and he wanted her to know just how much he had missed her.

Judy had to drop her toothbrush and respond the last time he did it. She pulled him to his knees and pushed her chin over his snout and forehead, and her cedary presence was so deliriously _good_ Nick wondered if he'd managed to change her mind after all.

"I saw that look in your eye," she murmured. "Before. While we're away, we'll plan something for when we get back."

Nick's breath caught as he took in her scent. He felt the grin on his muzzle. "What's that going to entail?"

"Don't know yet, slick." She kissed him. Now the spark was back. "We'll hash out the details."

\---

They squeaked onto her trolley stop's last departure for the morning and waited out a cramped ride that smelled too strongly of deer and badger for Nick's liking. Standing room-only, of course, and they couldn't even act on their proximity. Judy kept glancing over at him, eyes full of reassurance and love; Nick knew the rest of the train would probably take it as wariness. He let them have their illusions and worried about how her stomach was holding up.

Savanna Central Station was a riot of activity, as usual.

"Are you sure you're all right to travel?" he asked.

"I'll be fine."

"I could still sneak along. Bogo gave me the same week he gave you."

"Not yet." Judy stopped in the shade of an out-of-service ticket kiosk at the edge of the plaza and leaned on it like it was holding her up. It probably was. Even with everything they'd done, everything they'd fixed, it would be some time before Judy recovered. And she still wasn't done pushing herself. It drove him close to her again, public perception be damned. "I have to make it safe for you first."

"Can I do anything here?"

"Just be ready to follow," Judy said. "I want you to spend time with me away from all this. We need space to talk."

Judy Hopps, queen of understatement. His paw dwarfed hers when he laced his fingers around hers like this. He held the contact, even as they had to hide it against the corner of the ticket booth to keep it from being too obvious.

"I'll pack a bag," he said.

"They're not angry," Judy said, her eyes on their paws. "You know that, right? They're just scared. They'll come around when I've calmed them down. When we can talk to them."

Nick thought of the not-so-quiet fear in Stu's eyes the last time they'd seen each other. How differently things might have gone, if he'd had the courage to explain himself back then. "I want to, too."

"I love you." Judy pulled him down for one more daring kiss, and then she was backing away toward the station awnings. "I'm going to call you tonight. As soon as I can."

"Just be careful," he said. "Please."

She smiled at him. "I promise."

Eventually the crowds swallowed even her familiar ears, and Nick was alone again. But it felt different, this time. She'd trusted him. Now it was his turn to trust her to do what needed doing.

He did. The waiting would be hard, if brief, but this time when it was over they would be together again to heal. This time it was guaranteed. That certainty gave him the strength he needed to let her go, to turn around and walk away himself.

He hadn't had something to look forward to for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> [chronology](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPmpmdo39SmiRNC4BJVv2PAWi7fxBoP5FWba9n8s3qg/edit?pref=2&pli=1)


End file.
